[greenhorn]

I just bought an Olympus Linear PCM Recorder LS-10 to record live concerts with it.
 
It has several settings to choose among:
 
- 44,1 kHz 16 bit / 24 bit;
- 48 kHz 16 bit / 24 bit;
- 88,2 kHz 16 bit / 24 bit;
- 96 kHz 16 bit / 24 bit.
 
So 8 different choices.
 
I know the CDs are 44,1 kHz, 16 bit.
 
I read that 24 bit is a better audiophile choice - however, once a recording in 24 bits is transferred on a CD the result will be in 16 bits anyway.
 
And... 44,1 kHz? 48 kHz? Higher???
 
And I didn't understand whether converting a 24 bit recording into a 16 bit one might induce qualitative losses or not.
 
So briefly, what should be my choice anyway???

 

[DrSpiv]

24 to 16 is (mostly) a sort of parity adjustment, so you can expect a down-converted 24 to sound very similar to something that was recorded in straight 16 bit.
 
However 48 to 44.1 requires some bit interpolation because the sample rates do not line up. It's done, even in the recording industry, but it does introduce some issues. If you want to have a better-than-cd master to work from (and you probably do), go for double the sampling rate (88.2), and decide from there whether 16 bit or 24 bit are worth the extra space requirements and hassle.
 
In theory, anyway. Realistically your gear almost certainly samples at some specific rate and some specific bit depth, and it making an encoded adjustment to get to whatever it writes on disk. Some up-sample to sell numbers, some have brilliant hardware encoders that do a great job, and some really do have the ability to clock themselves to a specific sample rate at recording time. Mess with it and see what sounds best; hopefully it's one of the direct multiples of your CD format since that's apparently your goal. I don't know the specific gear, but if I had to guess it's native in 96/24, and just uses a simple encoder to go to 48/xx, and a relatively complicated (and imperfect by nature) one to achieve 44.1 and 88.2. That seems to be the common thing anyway.

 

[greenhorn]

Just... thanks. It made me understood a little bit more this stuff...

 

[non-entity]

DrSpiv just gave you a truly great answer, but I feel like adding that (if you choose to use use a higher rate than the CD standard) you shouldn't forget about dithering when sampling down for CD sampling rate / bit depth.

 

[Sumflow]

Doesn't it depend on the size of the file that he wants?

 

[charlesyu]

Size really doesn't matter nowadays because storage space is so cheap. (A 1TB drive is selling for around $70-80.)
 
Pick the highest setting, 96kHz/24bits in this case, because you can always down sample later. Although if you often burn your recordings to CDs, 88.2kHz/24bits might be better because, as DrSpiv mentioned, 88.2kHz allows for perfect conversion to 44.1kHz, which is the natural sampling rate of CDs.