bstaley,
Hi. No, I wasn't disagreeing with you and much as saying I wasn't understanding you completely. (I think I didn't read it enough times. I can understandd it now!) If the final dither output is a 24-bit data structure that puts dithered data in the upper two bytes (16-bits) and disregards what it puts in the lowest byte, then that's interesting, except that would make all your dithered data files 50% larger than they need to be. Also, my low end version of Sound Forge is only 16-bit, so I can't really look at this anyway. (Poor me!)
I mostly agree with the 48K comments. Read the other thread I did on this subject and I think most people did. There was one post, however, where the engineer (with a much larger budget than my home recording budget) talked about using an outboard hardware converter to do the sample rate conversion, and how everyone in his studio felt immediately that the sound was better than recording at 24/44.1. Unfortunately, I can't afford that comparison right now! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
And again, the final data type is important when choosing a sample rate to do a session. If you are NEVER going to make a CD, you might as well choose 48K.
Cheers,
Mark
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by bstaley:
I missed it when he said he mixes to 48k. I would recommend against doing this if your final goal is audio CD. You may gain a little bit of fidelity at 48k but I think you actually lose more when you finally resample to 44.1k.
Mark is correct in saying that there is really no difference in using the UltraMaximizer when you mix or using it after the fact in Sound Forge. For me personally I find that I don't want any "mastering" type plugins on my master fader because it affects the way I mix. It's almost a crutch to me. I like to get the mixes sounding as good as possible without any of that stuff and then bounce it. That way, any extra EQing/Compression/Maximizing I do just makes my exisitng mix sound better. This is not necessarily the right or wrong way, it's just what works for me.
Mark, I wasn't sure if you were agreeing or disagreeing with me on your third point. Let me clarify anyway. When you run the IDR it will dither and noise shape down to 16 bits. It just doesn't throw away the last 8 bits for you automatically. The file is still 24 bit but the last 8 bits are only storing zeros. You then need to let Sound Forge truncate those empty 8 bits. In Sound Forge, when you right click on 24Bit and change it to 16Bit, it is the same thing as going to the Process menu, choosing Bit-Depth Converter and selecting "16Bit" with Dither set to "none" and noise shaping set to "Off". That is what truncates it. I hope this clears it up a little.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>