[linux-audio-user] Linux music editor, greater than 32-bit ?

david gnome at hawaii.rr.com
Fri Feb 23 01:37:37 EST 2007


Paul Winkler wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2007 at 12:24:47PM -1000, david wrote:
>> Rick Wright wrote:
>>> Yes, but this 48bit representation of color is just 16bit x3 colors 
>>> [channels].  In other words the 48bit representation is 3 unrelated 
>>> 16bit [channel] representations concatenated, one each for the 3 primary 
>>> colors/CCD sensors.  The equivilent for audio would be just 16bit as 
>>> there is only one channel.
>> Hmmm, wouldn't there actually be TWO channels for audio - stereo?
> 
> No :-) Sure, two channels is still the most common delivery format
> (eg. CD).  But mono files will still be important for a long time
> (eg. as individual regions in a multi-channel editor session), and for
> delivery, the six-channel "5.1" format is becoming pretty common.

Hmmm - I've only seen that in games and DVD movies.

> So in the audio world, by convention we talk about bit depth per
> channel, not total.  If the graphics people used our conventions,
> they'd talk about a "16-bit, 3 channel" image, rather than saying "48
> bit" and leaving the number of channels implicit.  (Which is
> weird. What about when you switch color spaces, eg. from RGB to CMYK?
> Is it still 16 bits per channel? Do you call the CMYK file a "64-bit"
> file or what?)

CMYK uses 8-bits per color, so it uses 32-bits of color information. But 
its actual color space works out to less than the RGB color space that 
JPG uses.

I don't know anything about the mathematics of converting from CMYK to 
RGB. RGB and CYM (not including K for Black) are complimentary colors, 
or something like that, and the conversion process has to turn part of 
each pixel of RGB into an 8-bit shade of black. I just let the programs 
do it ...

> Conversely, if the audio world were to adopt the conventions of the
> graphics world, we'd talk about CDs as "32-bit" audio.  But we don't :)

Just wait until some recording industry marketing droid somewhere gets 
the bright idea of pitching "premium 32-bit CDs!" ;-)

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community



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