[jarvino]

Ah, missed that reply. So what is 16 bit mode doing to 24 bit samples if it isn’t throwing away all the low level detail?

[jarvino]

No you really can hear it. No question. In any of the drum libraries, hit a floor tom in 16 bit mode and listen out for the nasty sizzle as the sound fades away. The loud part of the hit sounds identical in 16 bit or 24 bit – it’s as the sound decays that things get ugly, and what started out as a nicely recorded hit using all 16 bits ends up as a 2 bit mess. Switch to 24 bit and listen to the floor tom again.

So pretty much all of these beautiful percussion samples have this problem. It’s harder to hear on some things, but really stands out on the lower pitched stuff, cajon/conga/udu etc. Compress any of these 16 bit samples and it gets a whole lot worse.

In a full band arrangement, this doesn’t matter as much as you’re masking all the nasty bits with all your other sounds, although as you compress more that nasty stuff does get more audible. It’s just such a shame for such brilliant percussion sounds to be limited in this way. If you aren’t going to sell an updated percussion set, why not give the 24 bit samples away for free?!

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