I’m new to digital music and am learning Cubase elements 6 which I bought a while ago. This technology is just great and its opened up all kinds of creative possibilities for me. I have a very basis query and don’t know where else to go. What is Bit technology and what is the difference between 32bit and 64 bit technology. As far as I can tell I am restricted to using 32bit technology with my current laptop. Also is 32bit technology good enough for broadcast quality. What are the differences between both bit technologies.
In short: this has nothing to do with sound quality. (there is also bitrate which is usually 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit, but that’s an entirely different subject as this is about how audio is stored).
It has everything to do with how much RAM your application can access. 64-bit is better than 32-bit because it overcomes the 4GB limit that 32-bit has. If you don’t have more than 4GB of RAM in your laptop, 64-bit is not of much use to you.
However, the software you use must be compatible with what you’re using. Cubase can do both 32 and 64 bit, but many plugins cannot. Especially older plugins might not be available in 64-bit format.
So: If you feel Cubase runs fine, you don’t it to use much more RAM than you do now and all the plugins you want run fine, stick with 32-bit.
If not, consider moving to 64, but make sure your plugins support it. If not, Cubase has a bit-bridge that does a decent effort running 32-bit plugins in 64-bit environment, but results may vary (things might not work or crash depending on the plugin).
As an addition to the above: You can only run Cubase 64-bit if your computer’s OS is 64-bit. To be complete, on such a computer, 32-bit Cubase will also run.