24bit CD....Longevity for Krystal/Medit

[geezer]

.....Well, I'm working on a live CD/DVD of Taj Mahal that is really far behind schedule because of some problems I was having with my new mixer (now solved with a DM2000, which is fantastic sounding), and which contains material I am really enamored of....At any rate, since I was so far behind already, I have decided to really take my time and do all the quality research I can.

This is a native 24bit/48k DVD project, so there is always an issue when taking the mixes to 16/44 for CD. On the last 2 projects, I did the conversion, mastering and dithering to 16bit (16bit project in Medit) in one pass and was pretty pleased with the results, but I took the time to make a bunch of different test CDs this time and rest my ears and listen later.

The long and short of the results is this: A 24 bit project (44.1) in Microeditor that is turned into a 16 bit CD using the internal math retains the 24 bit detail to a STUNNING degree better than dithering to 16 externally!


I had remembered this from a test CD burn I did on my first 24bit mixes 4 or 5 years ago, but didn't really have such a graphic test as the one I listened to this morning....The undithered mastering (identical settings otherwise) from the 24bit project still sounds like 24bit on the CD....reverb depth, tails and everything! It was truly startling, and sounded like my original mixes, which is always the struggle when dealing with 48k stuff.

.....This, of course, leaves me with the other problem: not being able to monitor the recording of these files into Krystal properly. The digital outs of Krystal are reversed during recording, and the analog outs are not high enough quality to use to make 24bit quality decisions.....to do this easily and consistently is going to require buying more outboard gear/converters or doing some custiom input setup on my board everytime I want to monitor this, which is problematic because the board will usually be living at 48k when this is going on.....

At any rate, this is going to change the way I do work now when CDs are part of the picture, and keep Krystal/Medit more involved....There is still the issue of the higher sampling rates that is never going to be changed with Medit, but at least I can keep using the good math of MTU for awhile to keep raising the quality bar on projects.