KeithEmo
Member of the Trade: Emotiva
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2014
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Analog tapes themselves aren't that quiet - which is something that many people seem to forget.
Back in those days, a good master tape machine had a better S/N than vinyl (hopefully), which was plenty good enough.
(I'm equally dubious about whether any of those early A/D converters had 24 bits of resolution anyway - you need a S/N of 96 dB to get 16 bits of real resolution.)
However, it is still technically possible for someone to produce a re-mix that is much quieter than the original master mix, or even than the original tracks themselves, with sufficiently aggressive processing and "restoration" - so I can't say it's impossible that somewhere there is a re-master of an original tape master that would "justify" 24 bits - but I'm not holding my breath. (Generally, when you do that much processing, I find the results to have so many serious artifacts that they don't sound good at all.)
That also brings up another interesting thing that people seem to forget:
Just as with any other re-mix or re-master, it's quite possible for a "high-res remaster" to sound worse than the original release.
Quote:
Back in those days, a good master tape machine had a better S/N than vinyl (hopefully), which was plenty good enough.
(I'm equally dubious about whether any of those early A/D converters had 24 bits of resolution anyway - you need a S/N of 96 dB to get 16 bits of real resolution.)
However, it is still technically possible for someone to produce a re-mix that is much quieter than the original master mix, or even than the original tracks themselves, with sufficiently aggressive processing and "restoration" - so I can't say it's impossible that somewhere there is a re-master of an original tape master that would "justify" 24 bits - but I'm not holding my breath. (Generally, when you do that much processing, I find the results to have so many serious artifacts that they don't sound good at all.)
That also brings up another interesting thing that people seem to forget:
Just as with any other re-mix or re-master, it's quite possible for a "high-res remaster" to sound worse than the original release.
Quote:
He was asking about bit depth and you seem to be addressing sample rate. I task you to find a 24-bit master made from analog tape that doesn't null to noise when truncated down to 16 bits.