Question about bouncing in Pro Tools and burning in Itunes.

[yesteryear]

So I bounce files from pro tools to my hard drive. When I do this I leave the setting in Pro tools at 24 bit, Stereo Inteleaved, wav file etc. In other word, nothing is being dithered or converted to 16 bit like a CD is. Then I just dump in Itunes and burn it. The tunes I burn sound fine and I have had no problems. I am confused with the dither and resolution stuff. I was under the impression that you can not burn a 24 bit file to CD. Is Itunes converting on its own? Am I missing out on something? Should I dither? Should I convert to 16 bit when bouncing? Ive searched but have only found tutorials on how to use dither and others that say convert it to 16 bit when bouncing. Thanks for any help.

 

[MichaelK]

Is ITunes converting on its own?

Yes, exactly.

Try this, bounce at 24-bit then bounce at 16-bit with dithering. Burn both to a CD in iTunes and see which you prefer.

I've found I like to bounce to disk at 16-bit for burning directly to CD, 24-bit for mastering.

 

[yesteryear]

I will try this to see what I hear. What differences should I notice?

 

[DANOCASTER]

You should put a dither plug-in on your master bus and then bounce to 16 bit wavs

what you're doing now is simply truncating the 24 bit file to 16 bit

I'd probably get Toast / Jam instead of iTunes (which can jack things up )

Make sure that in your iTunes prefs ( under Playback ) that the "Sound Enhancer" is UNchecked. It defaults to ON and is definitely screwing w/ your mixes ( combining info in the left and right channels, etc.. )

 

[elambo]

I'd probably get Toast / Jam instead of iTunes (which can jack things up )

I agree that Toast is preferable, but it shouldn't be necessary to spend the extra money. iTunes can burn solid CDs. You're right, the sound enhancement eq should be turned off right away and never turned on again.