> No they're not. And no matter how many times this gets linked to on the Internet, it's still wrong. The article is still correct, just like it always was. I

> No they're not. And no matter how many times this gets linked to on the Internet, it's still wrong. The article is still correct, just like it always was. Ironically, most of your analysis is also correct. Somewhere in your understanding though, you're leaping sideways to an incorrect conclusion. >The basic problem: the quieter a sound or detail gets, the fewer bits of resolution are used to represent it. So far so good, but you're about to go wrong again once you start thinking in terms of stairsteps and boxes and looking instead of hearing. Back to the bits. What lower amplitude (and fewer used bits) means is that the sound, as represented, is not as far above the noise floor as a full-amplitude sound. The digital noise floor is completely analogous to, eg, the noise floor of analog tape. If you use a dithered digital representation, you get something that behaves exactly as analog does. You hear and perceive both the same way. >In 16-bit recording, there simply aren't enough bits to represent very low level details without distorting them with a subtle but audible crunchy digital halo of quantisation noise. On an audio tape, the magnetic grains are just too large to represent very low level details without distorting them with a subtle but audible crunchy halo of analogue distortion and hiss. In a 24 bit recording, the noise you mention is still there! It's just shifted down [theoretically] 8 bits or -48dB. That's the only difference. The noise floor is lower. [In reality, 24 bit isn't. Most recordings don't even hit a full 16 bits, and no recordings, unless they're mathematically rendered, can get deeper than about 21 bits. There is no such thing as a 24-bit audio ADC/DAC that delivers 24 bits. The very best available today are about 21 bits of signal + 3 bits of noise.] So the difference in playback between 16 bits and 24 bits is about 5 actual bits. If you're complaining about soft sounds in a 16-bit recording 'not having enough detail' because they're down at, say, 3 bits of resolution, are you saying it's all fixed by using 8? Aren't 8 bits woefully too few for any kind of quality sound? (I hope at this point, you realize you're barking up an incorrect tree) If you're following me so far, we can continue, but I expect even this much is going to require more conversation.