Questions about the new bit depth setting

S2400
1

Is it kind of a bit crusher effect?
Isn’t its place in the “effect” section of the machine under the lonesome analog filters?
Does something happen when I resample something to have the “12 bit emulation” sound and then turn it up to 16 bit bit depth afterwards?
Just thinking it will add an extra layer of confusion concerning the “12 bit” classic sound.
Especially for new users when the container will be released.

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2

Yep, I agree this belongs in the EFFECTS button section, as well as a global Bit depth, strapped across the main mix outs. This is a great start, however.
Also along these lines, a sample frequency reducer, to go from 48khz down. I have found this to be more useful and musical than simple bitrate reduction.

3

If it goes in the effects section it would then be a bit more cumbersome to apply to only one sample, as the effects section seems to target channels over tracks

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4

I love how it magically adds 4 bits to 12 bit samples. Great feature :smiley:

EDIT: JK

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5

I can definitely see where you’re coming from, but I really like it where it’s at…for the same reason @juniorg stated.

And, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t add 4 bits to the 12 bit sample…they were never 12 bit to begin with.

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6

All the files in the S2400 are a 16 bit wav. The 12 bit samples are stored as 16 bit but they either ignore or 0 out (not sure what they are doing that is an @av500 question) the 4 least significant bits. The Bit Depth setting is using the same mechanism but just allows you to ignore more bits. From my testing Im inclined to believe that the bits are still there, but ignored, as increasing the bit depth to 16 seems to clean up the sound to my ears. I could be wrong though, and could be placebo effect. Since the AD conversion is pretty dang good in the S2400, you will have to reduce the bit depth quite a bit to get some of the gritty noise of older samplers- even those that were 12 bit. Ive an Ensoniq EPS and though it is 13 bit its equivalent to the S2400 at around 7 bits in terms of quantization noise.

I dont think there is much to be confused about really, its just an additional tool to dirty up the sound with, so you can choose 16 bit, 12 bit from the standard options, but if you want a bit more grime, crank down that bit depth…

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7

My first impression was for the average user who is not here or on Facebook having the possibility to turn the bit depth to 16 bit after doing the resampling procedure that turn the bith depth setting to 12 bit is something strange.

Making the line even more unclear between the influence of the hardware and the software. Just saying this because to my eyes the biggest selling point of the machine is still its “classic” sound. In this regard something easy to understand about “12 bit” can only be good for the machine in general.

8

It’s not so much the bit depth that gives “that sound”, it’s the sampling frequency I thought.

9
  1. indeed, sampling is always at 16bit, when you switch to “classic” resampler then the last 4 bit are ignored on PLAYBACK - but they are still present in the sample file
  2. thus you can “clean up” a classic sample by upping the bits to 16
  3. the classic sound is neither mainly due to bit depth or sampling frequency but mostly due to the very bad pitch shift algorithm of the SP12/1200. then you have the reduced bit depth, the low sample rate, the bad antialiasing filters before the ADC and the bad reconstruction filters after the DAC that all together make the other part of the classic sound
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10

Ah ok :+1:t2:

11

It isn’t necessarily an effect how we think of effects, normally. When used as an effect, it’s a process - with input, signal processing and output. If I understand correctly, the way it’s implemented on the S2400 is the result way the sample is played back, which would be roughly analogous to it being bit reduced BEFORE any other parts of the signal (such as filters, VCA, etc), and would more accurately reproduce the way lower sample rate samplers sounded.

So take a Mirage:
8bit sample through VCF and then VCA, the initial scuzzy, aliasing sample is "smoothed out by the filter and then has a clean amplification curve (based on envelope settings).

vs

16 bit sample through VCF and VCA, then bit-reduced as an effect, the sample starts off clean and after filtering/amplification, has aliasing etc added after the fact.