Reference Guide

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Improving Performance with Digital Audio
Improving Audio Performance
24-bit Tips
Here are a few tips for playing back and/or recording at 24-bits:
• Try to play back at 24-bits even if your sound card only operates at 20- or 18-bits:
Having established the default settings for new files, you must also specify at what playback bit-
depth you want your sound card to use. In the Audio Options dialog box, set the Audio Driver
Bit Depth to the desired value. Even if your sound card’s highest bit-depth is only 18- or 20-bits,
you should try selecting an Audio Driver Bit Depth of 24 first. If you receive an error message
when doing so, try selecting 20. If this also produces an error message, try selecting 18. In other
words, if you want SONAR to operate your sound card at any bit-depth greater than 16-bits, try
selecting the highest value possible in the Audio Driver Bit Depth setting, and work downward
from there if you have to.
(If your sound card’s maximum bit-depth is 20-bits and you specify an Audio Driver Bit Depth of
24 as advised above, audio data will still be sampled by your sound card in 20-bit samples, but
each sample will automatically be padded with extra 0’s to produce a 24-bit sample, which will be
stored at full 24-bit resolution in your project file.
• Some 24-bit cards require you to configure the order in which data is streamed:
If necessary, open the Audio Options dialog, click on the Advanced tab. In the Stream > 16-bit
data as option, select one of the following:
• 3 bytes
• 4 bytes, right justified
• 4 bytes, left justified
• 32-bit PCM, right justified
• 32-bit PCM, left justfied
These settings affect how 24-bit audio samples are transferred from the sound card into the
SONAR software, and affect the efficiency of the transfer. You’ll get the best performance from
this card when working at 24-bits if you use the correct setting for your sound card. If you’re not
sure whether your particular sound card requires these settings, consult the documentation that
came with your sound card. You should also check the web page www.cakewalk.com/Support/
Docs/sound cardTips.html to see if any information is available there regarding configuration of
your particular sound card in Cakewalk. When in doubt, leave these settings disabled.
(These settings are only relevant when working with sound cards at >16 bits-per-sample. You can
ignore them when operating at normal 16-bit depth.)
• Using 24-bit depth and/or high sampling rate can be costly:
While using 24-bit audio can improve the sound quality of your recordings, there are some
important drawbacks to keep in mind. Projects stored at 24-bit depth will require 50% more disk
space than those stored at 16-bits; if you have a large number of audio tracks (and keep in mind
that stereo tracks require twice as much data as mono tracks!), your audio project file can grow
very large and use up lots of disk space. Also note that recording, playing, and processing 24-bit
data utilizes more CPU resources than working with 16-bit data. This means that for a given
computer configuration, you will be able to record/play/process a smaller number of total