"Upgrading" 16bit wav to 32bit?

[chadi]

Hey guys, I have a simple question for you. So I have soundforge and it has an option to "upgrade"/"downgrade" sound files to higher or lower bitrates. 16, 24, 32 bit.

I ripped a song unto my computer as a 16bit wav which is the highest you can rip at and I opened it in soundforge and upgraded it to 32bit before saving it. Other than taking up a great deal more space, does it actually improve sound quality in any way shape or form, even if it isn't noticeable?

Thanks!

Chadwick

 

[jonnythan]

Does not improve the sound quality at all, but if you're going to *modify* the file, it allows you to modify at a higher resolution and lose less information each time you transform the waveform.

 

[Joe Schmoe]

You can't add information that wasn't already there in the 16-bit version.

 

[chadi]

Thanks for the answer guys!

I'm also assuming then that if I rip a song from the cd at 48khz 1536kbps it isn't any better than at 44khz 1411kbps? Am I correct?

 

[MDS]

I'm also assuming then that if I rip a song from the cd at 48khz 1536kbps it isn't any better than at 44khz 1411kbps? Am I correct?

The music on an audio CD is 16/44.1 PCM, which yes does equate to 1411 kbps. You cannot 'rip' it any other way - just as you technically don't rip to MP3.

The audio will be extraced as 16/44.1 because that is what it is - but the program you use to do the digital audio extraction may have options to change it to another format on the fly.

If you're ripping CDs to build a digital library you should save the WAVs as-is and then convert to whatever format you want after the fact. I save the WAVs on an external drive and then transcode to MP3 and save them on another drive. I always have the original uncompressed WAV and from it I can make any format I want. It is a slow process with SF but it's what I prefer because I find that sometimes it is necessary to make minor edits to the files.

 

[jonnythan]

If you're ripping CDs to build a digital library you should save the WAVs as-is and then convert to whatever format you want after the fact. I save the WAVs on an external drive and then transcode to MP3 and save them on another drive. I always have the original uncompressed WAV and from it I can make any format I want. It is a slow process with SF but it's what I prefer because I find that sometimes it is necessary to make minor edits to the files.

OT, but why do you store as WAV and not use a lossless compression method like FLAC?

 

[MDS]

OT, but why do you store as WAV and not use a lossless compression method like FLAC?

Because hard drives are cheap and I don't want to wake up one day and find that a decoder for whatever lossless format I chose is no longer available (even though that may be low risk). A WAV file is raw PCM so will never ever become unreadable.

 

[jonnythan]

Fair enough.

Do you wear a foil hat?

 

[MDS]

Fair enough.

Do you wear a foil hat?

No but I'm obviously paranoid.