I would like to hear the music I’m creating on Cubase at a depth of 24 bit (not the default 32).
Me and a friend are working on a Windows laptop and a OS X laptop, and both would like this “downgrade”.
I don’t know much of this type of issues, but I think I understood that the Generic low latency ASIO driver communicate with the Windows audio system at 16 bit, and the Integrated Audio of the OS X runs at 32 without the possibility to change this setting in the MIDI Audio configuration panel.
Could a specific ASIO driver help me? Wich? How?
Audio output is always “downgraded” to 24 bits by ASIO driver or audio interface. This is because there are no such thing as 32-bit digital-to-analog converters.
But if you like to play with bits, there is also a plug-in which let’s you to change bit depth to whatever you want:
I didn’t know it existed. But don’t get too excited about it. If you look at the data sheet, you’ll find it’s dynamic range is 123dB (even worse than on 24-bit versions of the same product line). This means it’s output is comparable to 21 bit D/A converter. Look at the data sheet again and you’ll find a hint:
Additional Features: 32-Bit Digital Processing
Now what does this mean? I don’t know. Maybe it does oversampling with 32 bits. This guess is supported by the fact that it’s THD figure is 1/2 of the 24-bit converters of the same product line. Or maybe it’s called 32-bit converter, because it accepts 32-bit input. As I said: I don’t know.
Then you have to remember: 32 bits of this converter are not the same as 32 bits in Cubase. Cubase uses floting-point arithmetic while converter uses fixed-point arithmetic. So there must be conversion somewhere between them. Who does this conversion (Cubase or ASIO driver or audio interface hardware) depends of course on hardware/driver/DAW software combination. It’s very possible that with some combinations audio will be reduced to 24-bits in some point of the chain.
Conclusion: I don’t know if the D/A conversion part is really 32-bit or not. But it doesn’t matter. This is like when companies are selling you 20-megapixel cameras, but “forget” to tell you the lens is capable only to reproduce details which can be captured as well with 5 megapixel camera.