Quick Dither and Bit Depth Question

[EMRR]

.....and again.....

AVB MOTU interfaces? AVB appears to be a 32 bit signal bus, Mac reports the interfaces as such, and the data sheets on the DA converter chips say they have 32 bit input/DAC/filter resolutions.

I'm curious to know if there really is something different going on with the AVB product line which changes the dither and/or noise shaping game.

[EMRR]

Then there is the Masterworks Limiter interface, whose interface has a checkbox. You can read about it on page 54 of the Plugins Guide:

• Changing bit depth with dither
  Bit depth or resolution is the number of ones and zeros used to describe a digital audio sample. Commercial CDs use 16-bit samples. MOTU software has the ability to record 16 bit, 24 bit, or 32 bit floating point samples. Under some circumstances, it may be desirable to have lower sample resolution, such as 8 bit web audio or 12 bit sampler playback.

Shooshie

The MW Limiter is described as 64 bit float processing.

Just played around with it and a bit scope to see what's up when DP is set for 32 bit float, or bounces with that depth. If bit depth is set anything from 1 to 23, that's the depth you get. If it's set 24, it bounces a 32 bit signal depth, either with or without dither selected.

It's kinda spooky to watch 32 bits 'float' on a bit scope, with a quiet song intro showing 32 bits between 8th and 40th bit on the scope, all rising as volume increases. Pretty cool.

I take that to mean with 32 bit float bounces using the MW Limiter on the mix bus that one should have a setting of 24 and dither turned off.

It only seems conflicting to see 24 as the highest option, though I imagine there's no practical value in settings from 25-31. It would be nice it if displayed 32, and perhaps it does in newer versions of DP.

You can leave DP set for 24 and still bounce at 32 float. That avoids any merges turning into 32 float files. Or, if you are in the habit of freezing tracks once a mix is done so there's a 'flat fader mix with processing' available later, you can switch to 32 and freeze full resolution processing.