Revised 24 Bit Demos Of The Bardstown Bosendorfer

[Bardstown Audio]

Within the last few days I revised most of the solo piano demos of the Bardstown Bosendorfer Imperial Grand Model 290 on the mp3 page of our web site with 24 bit versions of this instrument. Most of the solo classical and solo blues piano demos of the Bardstown Bosendorfer were originally produced with the 16 bit Giga version of this instrument over a year and a half ago, so I spent several days reproducing these same demos with the 24 bit versions of this instrument.

Most of the older demos that are still remaining on our web site that feature other Bardstown instruments in the mixes as well, including the guitars, tenor banjos, accordions, and Bosendorfer, were produced with the 16 bit Giga versions of these instruments including the Bosendorfer in 16 bit Giga format as well.

Most of the demos recently produced by Alan Russell, which feature all of these Bardstown instruments in the mixes, were produced with the 24 bit versions of all of these instruments.

As good as the 16 bit Giga versions of these instruments sound, the 24 bit versions do sound better.

I also used Emagic's new Space Designer room simulator on a couple of these revised solo piano demos, which are indicated accordingly on the mp3 page of our web site.

In the 24 bit package of the Bardstown Bosendorfer Imperial Grand, all three 24 bit sampler formats are included... EXS24, HALion, and Kontakt.

Kip McGinnis
Bardstown Audio
www.bardstownaudio.com

[rrtdj]

i always thought that 24-bit sample libraries are merely a hype.

could you please explain, what is the actual benefit of using 24-bit samples instead of normalized 16-bit samples?

i know even that yamaha until recently stuffed all their samplers (even professional) with 8-bit ROM samples and that still sounded good.

[gyohng]

Rich, there is no difference. It's barely a hype. It's important to have 24 bits during recording and mixing, but sample libraries are OK at 16 bit, when normalized.

I have written the resampling/dithering software for VSL to sample down their 96khz-24bit files to 16 bits.

I am working hard on other methodology, that allows to reduce bitdepth and samplerate and squeeze sounds with no perceived quality loss (with parts regenerated afterwards).

Would you tell that 4Front freebie VSTis have 8-bit samples inside?

(Pro versions will have, and the betas that I already posted on my beta - are 16-bit versions, but the difference is really little.)

Thanks,
George.

[rrtdj]

umm, i guess i spoiled something. not sure what exactly, but excuse me anyway.

[Bardstown Audio]

The 24 bit versions of the Bardstown Bosendorfer do sound distinctly better than the 16 bit Giga version, though it is not a huge night and day difference, but the difference is slightly more than just being a subtle difference. The 24 bit versions of this instrument sound smoother with noticeable increased definition, and this difference is also noticeable on mastered 16/44.1 CD's when using 24 bit instead of the 16 bit Giga version of this instrument.

I am not implying that the 16 bit Giga version of this piano does not sound good. The 16 bit Giga version was produced from 24 bit audio recordings of the Bosendorfer Imperial and dithered to 16 bit using high quality dithering. This was necessary considering the current version of Giga Studio only supports 16 bit audio samples. In this day and age most people are producing music in 24 bit sessions, so it is always better to have 24 bit source audio rather than 16 bit audio and thus having to add ones and zeros to this 16 bit audio in 24 bit sessions, which is done on the output from Giga Studio.

Without getting into a detailed technical explanation regarding bit depths and sample rates in audio recording, It is not accurate to say that there is hardly no noticeable difference at all between 16 and 24 bit sampled instruments, no more than you could say there is hardly no noticeable difference between 16 and 24 bit recorded audio tracks of live instruments. Sampled instruments are recorded audio files, just as recorded audio tracks of live instruments are recorded audio files as well. The same exact principles regarding 16 and 24 bit recorded audio apply in both of these situations.

If there was hardly no detectable difference between 16 and 24 bit recorded audio, professionals would not bother with 24 bit recording and would be happy to track record all of their music at 16 bit.

Kindest regards,

Kip McGinnis
Bardstown Audio
www.bardstownaudio.com

[Jeremy_NSL]

Well you *might* get a lower noise floor w/ 24-bit samples, but if 16-bit samples are normalized and dithered correctly there won't be a perceptible difference.

24-bit is only useful for dynamic range purposes, which is sort of funny when you consider that most people compress a fair bit of their dynamic range out of existence anyway (not that that is a good thing).

[Bardstown Audio]

The 24 bit Bosendorfer samples were individually normalized near o dB one note at a time by hand (no batch processing) on both the left and right side of the stereo spectrum before dithering to 16 bit for the Giga version, and of course the 24 bit sample versions of this instrument were produced with the same high quality level of attention.

Kip McGinnis
Bardstown Audio
www.bardstownaudio.com

[rrtdj]

24-bit is only useful for dynamic range purposes

there is not much dynamic range within one sample. it's the difference between samples.

and when the most silent sample is normalized before converting to 16-bit (and set back to silent using sampler volume param), then it can be said to have more than 16-bit dynamic range.