Instruction Manual

858 Improving Audio Performance
System Configuration
Bit Depths for Playback
Bit Depths for Recording
Bit Depths for Importing Audio
Bit Depths for Exporting Audio
Bit Depths for Rendering Audio
Bit Depths for Playback
Most sound cards can play audio at 16-bit or 24-bit resolution, with a few
sound cards supporting 18-bit and 20-bit resolution. When your project
contains files with different bit depths SONAR plays them at the bit depth
that your sound card is currently set to. Because SONAR can play projects
that contain files of different bit depths, you don’t have to convert 16-bit files
to 24 bits to play them with other 24-bit files, saving significant storage
space. If you’re playing 64-bit, 32-bit, or 24-bit files at 16 bits, you can turn
dithering on in the Audio Options dialog to compensate for the truncated
data.
When you first install SONAR, the Wave Profiler profiles your sound card at
all the bit depths that the sound card supports, so when you change the
playback bit depth, you don’t need to run the Wave Profiler again (you do
need to relaunch SONAR).
Here’s how to change the playback bit depth for a project:
To Change Playback Bit Depth
1. Use the Options-Audio command to open the Audio Options dialog.
2. On the General tab, choose the bit depth you want to use in the Audio
Driver Bit Depth field.
3. Click OK.
Notes:
• If you choose to play back at greater than 16 bits, you may need to pick
a bit format for your data on the Driver Profiles tab of the Audio Options
dialog box in the Stream > 16 Bit Data As field. You may need to
consult your sound card’s documentation to find the optimum setting.
• Some audio devices, especially USB devices that use WDM drivers,
can not operate in 24-bit mode unless a variable in SONAR’s
AUD.INI
file is set to 1. The variable is Use24BitExtensible=<0 or 1>, which goes
in the [name of your audio device (‘n’ in, ‘n’ out)] section of the
AUD.INI
file.