"Jay - atldigi" wrote in message
...

"increased resolution" on a full-scale signal is nothing more than the
added ability to resolve the quietest overtones, then he's right and is
actually in full agreement with Arny.

At least somebody understands me, but I thought I had already said this
somewhere in the thread. It's those quieter components that you are
getting from the extra bits. The louder components aren't represented
any better. In the end, it can be a more precise and better sounding
recording (provided the source is of a quality to benefit), but it's
because of the little things you can now record, not that the big ones
are better.


Still, isn't it so that the number of possibilities doubles each time we add
a new bit, thus a 24 bit converter has 16, 777, 217 values to choose from
when converting the voltage to numbers. This means, that the
most-significant-bit of a 24 bit converter has (16,777,217 / 2) 8, 388,608
values to choose from when it's giving a number to any signal in the region
of roughly -6dB to 0 dB Full Scale, right?

That leads to the following:
A 24 bit system has quantized a loud component somewhere between -6 to 0 dB
FS
a lot more accurately than a 16 bit system would with the same signal, since
it's rounded the original voltage more precisely.
Also, if you were recording the same source with a 24 bit system peaking
at -48dB FS _and_ a 16 bit system peaking at 0dB FS, after normalizing the
24bit file to 0 dB, you would essentially have two identical files,
_identically_ quantized, since the 24 bit system had used its 16
least-significant-bits.

So, louder components are also represented better in a 24 bit system.
Are THESE aforementioned things something we can ALL agree on?