Does rendering degrade WAV's?

[MoreSpaceEcho]

Who are these people and what did they do with my TapeOp messageboard?

well jeff, here we are 7 pages in and you still have yet to say what was so wrong with my initial post.

[apropos of nothing]

I'd just like to point out that I like cheese. Yum. Thanks, bye.

Jarlsberg on crisp bread. Wonderful.

I like goat's milk feta on pizza like a lot. With some fresh basil and fresh tomatoes and spinach. That is the yum.

[The Scum]

i believe most DAWs do all their internal calculations at 32 bit float. sonar you can set to do 64 bit float. protools hd does 48 bit fixed. if you have a bitscope you can see what the DAW is doing...

That's correct, as far as bit-depths.

It actually comes back to the underlying processor hardware. Around 2001/2002, PC processors got some very fast 32-bit floating point processing added on (remember Altivec or SSE?). The same stuff that makes for really detailed first-person-shooters can also be used for audio work. So they're screaming fast when it comes to manipulating 32-bit floats.

It's funny - Intel introduces chips with native 64-bit processing, and shortly thereafter, there's a 64-bit Sonar. If the software was designed right, it could have been a one-line change in the source code. (it might be that Sonar did it first because they don't have any users on legacy powerPC hardware...Steinberg and Apple have to keep that in mind)

HD is using Motorola DSPs, which are 48-bit fixed point...again, the hardware is dictating the precision.

The specs for a VST plugin indicate that the audio data passed between the host and plug is in 32-bit float, so any data passed through those plugins will be 32-bit floats on the plugin I/O (but no guarantees what it's doing inside).

Which brings us to the bitscope - since software bitscopes are plugins, they're probably using the data they're handed to draw the bits. The first one I found in a quick web search came from Tobybear.de, and has 32-bit resolution. You could plug it in on a 64-bit channel in Sonar, but it's only going to tell you about the 32-bit data on the VST interface.

And full circle to the original question - it looks like Tobybear.de has a plugin that will save the data it's given into a file. If it can save the 32-bit float stream, by dropping it in at different points on a channel, you could see how different stages in the DAW influence the sound, or compare the edited data to the rendered data.

[mjau]

I'd just like to point out that I like cheese. Yum. Thanks, bye.

Jarlsberg on crisp bread. Wonderful.

I like goat's milk feta on pizza like a lot. With some fresh basil and fresh tomatoes and spinach. That is the yum.

Oh hell yes, definitely. Throw on some caramelized onions and you, sir, are in business.

[inverseroom]

I'd just like to point out that I like cheese. Yum. Thanks, bye.

Jarlsberg on crisp bread. Wonderful.

I like goat's milk feta on pizza like a lot. With some fresh basil and fresh tomatoes and spinach. That is the yum.

Oh hell yes, definitely. Throw on some caramelized onions and you, sir, are in business.

The Greek restaurant business, in fact.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

[wayne kerr]

Hey it's 2008! Whoah.

[RefD]

Hey it's 2008! Whoah.

sorry for the lack of flying cars.

[wayne kerr]

Hey it's 2008! Whoah.

sorry for the lack of flying cars.

no you're not. a**hole!

[wayne kerr]

He's done it to me, in fact.

i have? sorry about that! i try to be nice, but sometimes i can't resist playing the Internet Asshole.

let me try and make it up to you.

*rolls fatties and serves chocolate muffins to everyone in thread EXCEPT JEFF*

No apology necessary . . . that was kind of the point, if I had one. You, me, Jeff, whoever, we all get feisty here sometimes.

*cyber-inhales*

"Why can't we all . . . GET ALONG?"

bogart.

[Jeff White]

I believe that this has been quite the entertaining read. Thanks! Goodbye!

Jeff

[MoreSpaceEcho]

woah, blast from the past. this thread is kind of a classic. good work everyone!

[wayne kerr]

I believe that this has been quite the entertaining read. Thanks! Goodbye!

Jeff

OK! C-ya!