| First of, I agree that 24/192 is not very useful for most circumstances (also for the dynamics thing, you still need a 24/192 master done without all the compressions). But your arguments aren't quite right, IMO. If you have a 16/44 sample, and you don't play it at full volume, you get some use out of those extra bits. Especially if you have a volume envelope. Also many modern samples are actually saved as 24 (or 32 bit even). Especially if they're my own creation from noodling around with softsynths, but they're shared like that as well, obviously. Then, if you apply a plugin or effect that supports 192/24 output, on a 16/44 sample, you still get useful information in those additional bits, even if the sample did not. Think of the very quiet end of a reverb tail, for instance. But that's for producers. It's always good to have your working stuff in high quality, you never know how far you'll end up amplifying those low order bits. So I can see the use for 24 bit audio (in certain contexts), but I'm really not so sure at all what the 192kHz is good for. Since it's waaaayyy above the human hearing range, all I can think of is dithering. You can hide a lot of your dithering noise in the ultrasonic range (which almost seems like free lunch IMHO) and then ... you obtained even more (virtual) bits of fidelity! Which you didn't really need cause you were using 24 bit audio in the first place. I agree it's mostly a marketing gimmick, otherwise. |