[tialaramex]

And the bits are basically free. If we had very cheap 24-bit floats and nothing bigger, maybe we'd use those, but we've got cheap 32-bit floats, so those are fine.

The most important property of floating point is "infinite headroom". In integer space, sixteen times quieter means 4 fewer bits of audio, get the levels wrong badly enough and people can hear your mistake even if you fix it later - but in float space it barely makes any difference, so long as the levels are correct in the final consumed audio nobody cares.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

We would NOT use 24 bit floats since that would make them less than ideal at matching the hypothetical (and almost certainly never reach) 24 bit resolution of integer DAC/ADC hardware.

The reason why 32 bit floats work great is that they can handle a 24 bit integer without any loss, and then if for some reason the values get kicked up above the maximum you can represent there, you get subtle noise rather than heavy distortion.

[tialaramex]

I don't think I agree. As you say, those extra few bits in your integer PCM are probably just noise, worse they might be correlated noise. They're not worthless, but I can't agree that they're automatically better than the infinite headroom option.

We don't have a world with 24-bit float DAWS, in our world stuff tends to offer 32-bit float, and so that's a no brainer, but just as I'm sure the 14-bit CD would have been perceived much the same as our world's 16-bit CD (bad engineers would do a bad job with it, good engineers would learn to use it well, some people would hate it for no reason), I think 24-bit float in the studio would have similar fans to 32-bit float.

[creeble]

“16 times quieter” is not 4 bits.

“Half volume” is subjective, and for music is typically between 6 and 10dB (most US audio engineering classes use 10dB).