24 bit vs 16 bit? (1 Viewer)

[Matt Weyen]

Say I were to use the digital out of a 24 bit audio card, Audigy for example, versus the digital out of a 16 bit card, example the SBlive, what are the difference I will notice? Will everything that goes to my reciever be at 24 bit with the audigy or just what is originally 24 bit material (I don't know what that would be)? Will the audigy upsample all of my material to 24 bit and sound a lot better than my SBlive?

 

[Tekara]

okay,
the difference in 24bit and 16 bit is how much information is used to recreate a sound wave. . . the more bits the "smoother" the wave form of the audio will be. . . in essence better quality sound.

typically video cards will upsample all sound and spit out the highest bitrate possible. . . but this won't help the quality of the audio at all, kinda like recording a VHS tape onto DVD; it'll still have VHS quality in spite of the medium. On the other hand, any audio that is originally high quality will stay high quality and almost all recent sound cards will clean up the signal going out.

baseline: get a higher quality sound card for the higher quality audio.