Upscaling 16 bit to 24 bit

Posted by: hungryhalibut on 10 May 2017

I've today discovered, from reading another thread, that it's possible to upscale 16 bit recordings to 24 bit, using Asset. I currently transcode my FLAC files to WAV, but keeping the native bit depth.

So I thought I'd give upscaling a go. It's certainly different. The imaging is more tightly defined, and it sounds clearer and cleaner. Very organised. But maybe less engaging- more academic sounding. It reminds me of when I tried Chord Odyssey cables instead of NacA5 - everything was very neat and tidy but ultimately unengaging - a bit boring.

It's certainly interesting that there is this change. I'm not sure if I prefer it or not. Has anyone else tried it? What did you think? Maybe I need to upscale for a week and then revert. Certainly swapping between the two quickly isn't helping.

Posted on: 12 May 2017 by sjbabbey

I believe that the Asset option to upscale to 24 bit is there to provide additional headroom when applying album/track gain i.e. similar to using 32 bits when editing hi-res audio files prior to dithering down to 24 bits.