On Aug 14, 2009, at 17:14, Paul Davis wrote: > You're assuming that you never store intermediate mixes that may > actually have overflowed a 24 or 32 bit representation. I would agree > that this might not be best practice, but its actually not as > un-useful as it might at first appear.
I covered intermediate mixes in the second half of my response. But few consumers of audio are actually interested in production, so they don't need intermediate formats. > i'm not an advocate for Ardour using FLAC as a native format. i just > don't like telling users "it can't be done". Ardour can certainly support FLAC for Bounces or any other final output. It wouldn't even be hard to support FLAC as well as Ableton Live does, and perhaps even go beyond what Ableton supports. Saying "it can't be done" is a gross oversimplification. A more accurate statement would be "FLAC is not the ideal format for all possible files that Ardour might work with, but FLAC is certainly a perfect choice for most input and output files." The typical DAW allows a Bounce in 24-bit or even 16-bit, and it is assumed that the user understands the consequences of choosing a narrow bit depth like 16-bit. Ardour would not even need to guide the user to avoid FLAC for intermediate storage, at least not any place where 24-bit and 16-bit are other format options. It would be sufficient to have a chapter in the manual discuss the benefits of using higher bit depths for intermediate mixes. I haven't used Ardour, but if certain functions like Track Freeze are available, then Ardour could limit the options to 32-bit-clean formats. If the GUI makes bouncing of stems obviously distinct from a final bounce, then Ardour could again guide the user towards 32-bit for intermediate mixes while allowing the choice of FLAC for final delivery formats. Brian Willoughby Sound Consulting _______________________________________________ Flac-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev
