Jim Alfredson

It depends. For multi-tracking and using any kind of in-the-box processing, 24bit is better than 16bit for the reasons outlined above, mainly as a safeguard against bad gain staging. But if you were recording something say in stereo with no overdubs and very little post-processing and you set your levels correctly, 16bit would be fine. But most everything today is designed to record and sound best at 24bit (again, the analog side makes the biggest difference) and storage costs are low so why not use it?

Yes. 24bit is only useful in the recording process, not for the final product. The only difference between 24bit and 16bit is the dynamic range. The dynamic range of 16bit is nominally 96db which is already far more than any final product needs or uses. The reason to use 24bit in the recording process is because it allows you to fudge your gain staging and not worry about it. So yes, I record at 24bit because it allows me to not necessarily worry about my gain staging when recording dynamic music like jazz or classical. I shoot for about -12dbfs (about halfway up most digital meters) as my peaks and even if the signal is much quieter, the noise floor of 24bit is so low that you can increase the gain after the fact and it won't suffer from quantization errors, aliasing, etc. But for the final mastered and delivered product, 16bit is more than enough. Here's a great article on why and it even touches upon the subject of the usefulness of dither. http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded From the article: So, 24bit does add more 'resolution' compared to 16bit but this added resolution doesn't mean higher quality, it just means we can encode a larger dynamic range. This is the misunderstanding made by many. There are no extra magical properties, nothing which the science does not understand or cannot measure. The only difference between 16bit and 24bit is 48dB of dynamic range (8bits x 6dB = 48dB) and nothing else. This is not a question for interpretation or opinion, it is the provable, undisputed logical mathematics which underpins the very existence of digital audio.So, can you actually hear any benefits of the larger (48dB) dynamic range offered by 24bit? Unfortunately, no you can't. The entire dynamic range of some types of music is sometimes less than 12dB. The recordings with the largest dynamic range tend to be symphony orchestra recordings but even these virtually never have a dynamic range greater than about 60dB. All of these are well inside the 96dB range of the humble CD. What is more, modern dithering techniques (see 3 below), perceptually enhance the dynamic range of CD by moving the quantisation noise out of the frequency band where our hearing is most sensitive. This gives a percievable dynamic range for CD up to 120dB (150dB in certain frequency bands). Again, I'm talking about the final product, not the recording process. By all means, record at 24bit. Many times it will sound better but that's because you don't have to worry about the gain. Case in point, I recently did an audio/video mix of a classical percussion duo from Michigan State. Unfortunately they recorded it themselves using a Zoom audio recorder / camera and some other GoPro style cameras. The Zoom was their main audio recorder and it was set to 16 bits. When they set the recording levels, they did so using the loudest part of the piece as their guide. This was fine for that particular movement, but unfortunately the first movement of the piece was orders of magnitude softer. And because they recorded it at 16bit, which does not have the extended dynamic range of 24bit (which is really just extended detail at very low volumes), when I gained up the audio there was all sorts of nasty quantization errors in it. I added some dither but the damage was done. If they had recorded it at 24bit, it would've been fine. Of if they had been more careful with their gain staging, it would've been fine. Also, consumer devices don't exactly have the best analog front ends. Most conversion chips are the same and don't have a sound. It's the analog electronics in front of the ADC and after the DACs that make the difference.

RIP Victor Bailey. I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging with him at the 2003 Park City Jazz Festival (where I played with Corey Christiansen and Danny Gottlieb). He was as nice as can be to this young and nervous musician and told me he loved Hammond organ. He also told me something I never knew; that his uncle was the great drummer Donald 'Duck' Bailey, who played and recorded with Jimmy Smith on a handful of classic Blue Note albums. He said that as a young boy, the trio of Jimmy, Donald, and Quentin Warren used to practice at his house in Philly! Can you imagine! No wonder he had the music in him. Serendipitously, at that same time I had been digesting the Joe Zawinul Syndicate World Tour CD for weeks. Victor played on a big chunk of it. He said that he got the gig literally days before and was reading everything for the first time on those recordings. That was when I realized I wasn't worthy. What an amazing musician and a beautiful human being.

Might have to call a vintage synth restorer, like Switched On in Austin, TX or RetroLinear in Pennsylvania. Are you in the States?

If I misunderstood your comment, then I apologize.

The reason to use dither is to mask certain harmonics that may appear due to digital processing. Essentially what you are doing is raising the noise floor. The noise floor is the point at which the signal becomes indistinguishable from the background noise. The reason to do this is to mask the artifacts from converting a higher bit depth to a lower bit depth, like from 24bit to 16bit CD. Such conversions cause quantization errors which appear as harmonics. The dither masks those. So if you're digitizing analog sources into your computer, you don't need dither. A good and easily understandable guide is here: http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/izotope-dithering-with-ozone.pdf

You're conflating the act of capturing the source with the presentation of the final product to the listener. What RVG is talking about is the presentation of his finished recording to the consumer. In other words, he made certain aesthetic decisions for whatever reasons (including the wonky piano and wacky reverb) and he wants the listener to experience those decisions on the final master as close as possible to the way he intended. It's like a photograph of a painting. You want the photograph to accurately capture the colors and texture of the original as closely as possible. Therefor what he is saying is that linear digital is a much better medium for that than analog, specifically vinyl. In order to cut the vinyl, you have to make substantial concessions to your lovingly created master in the vinyl mastering process. And even then the final product deviates from the master further due to the quality of the pressing and also each time the vinyl is played (adding more surface noise and pops and clicks). Sorry but this simply isn't true. I'm pretty sure he's referring to the CD standard here, 16bit 44.1kHz, which is more than enough for the final mastered product. I do not. 24bits is pointless for the final product. 16bits is more than enough. The increase of bit depth has nothing to do with warmth.

I'll post a track list in an update for pledgers. That's a good idea!

Are you talking about the digital pipe organs?

Thanks, everyone!

Yeah, awesome! Thanks, everyone!

Hey friends, Our upcoming CD is now available for pre-order. We're doing all Beatles tunes and it's called "B3tles - A Tribute to the Fab Four". Hope you guys will consider participating in the crowdfunding, which allows us to produce and release this material. http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/organissimo

I don't know for sure if the EXP-100 will mount. I think it will; pretty sure. The mount is simple a bracket that attaches to the expression pedal. Might be worth an email or call to Hammond USA.

Mr. Brewer teaches at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids and is a fine trombonist and a good friend.

Best quote: What are your feelings on digital versus analog? The linear storage of digital information is idealized. It can be perfect. It can never be perfect in analog because you cannot repro­duce the varying voltages through the dif­ferent translations from one medium to an­other. You go from sound to a microphone to a stylus cutting a groove. Then you have to play that back from another stylus wig­gling in a groove, and then translate it back to voltage. The biggest distorter is the LP it­self. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes go­ing simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good rid­dance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engi­neer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium. A lot of people argue that digital is a cold­er, sterile sound. Where do you think that comes from? Where does it come from? The engineers. You've noticed they've attributed the sound to the medium. They say digital is cold, so they've given it an attribute, but linear digi­tal has no attributes. It's just a medium for storage. It's what you do with it. A lot of this has to do with the writing in consumer magazines. They've got to talk about some­thing. http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2011/05/rudy-van-gelder-signature-sound.html

What model of speakers are they? What model amp?

Do you have 'Bop Rascal' Kevin? That's one of my favorites. BTW, I produced an album for Bill that we recorded earlier in the spring. We're looking at an early 2017 release.

Delete that link from the thread and it should solve the problem.

The forum used to have a special "trash forum" where deleted posts and threads would go, but the software developers took that out. I asked if there was any way it could be re-implemented and they said no. The thing to do for the time being is to let me know AS SOON AS IT HAPPENS and I can have the database restored from a backup. We may lose a few posts, but that's better than an entire thread. After two days, it is too late.

Yep.

I use 808 000 000. Some folks like to put a bit of the second drawbar in there, like 828 000 000. To change how patches affect the lower manual when you select a new preset, go to the PATCH submenu and turn OFF the L/P parameter (Lower Preset). This is a global setting so once you change it, it stays that way... no saving required. For more information on what loads with each patch/preset, check out the PATCH LOAD section in the SK user manual, page 76.