Project bit depth

Cubase
1

Hi everybody,

I’ve bought on eBay a Swissonic USB Studio D audio board together with ASIO drivers by Propagamma.
The hardware has these top features: 48Khz stereo audio and 20bit resolution.
I’ve managed to set up 48Khz in Cubase project settings but I’m not able to set 20 bit resolution; only 16, 24 or 32 bit float.
How can I set everything on 20bit? Is there a way or have I to be forced on 16bits? :frowning:

Thanks to every kind reply.

–
Riccardo

2

Never heard of that card. There’s no 20 bit anything in Cubase. I’d use 32 bit float and dither before export.

3

don’t confuse the word length of the audio card with the bit depth of the created file. You can use 24 bit and even 32 or 64 bit in Cubase as the file bit depth. But, any single signal coming from the audio interface will only contain 20 bits of data. Cubase already processes at 32 bits internally. So, if you add two 20 bit inputs together in Cubase, it will combine them in the 32 bit domain. It will then output the sum in whatever bit depth the file is set to, performing whatever truncation is required.

4

Thank you all guys.

So I’ll have to set up my studio like this:

  1. On AudioMidiSetup set 48khz / 20bit

  2. On Cubase set 48khz / 32bit float

  3. Fire a dither vst in the latest part of the audio out.

5

You don´t have to - you can. You can also use 24 Bit.

6

  1. Do you set the bit depth on the audio card? I don’t recall doing that with the Delta 1010 I used to have.

  2. although 32bit will work, it doesn’t get you much for the extra work load it puts on your computer. Stick with 24bit. You will clip the inputs from your card before you will clip the internal processing of Cubase.

  3. Only dither when you converting bit depths. And, only do it once. Don’t run it unless you are exporting to a format that truncates the bits.