Setting bit depth in ableton?

[DeepFiber]

Is there a way? I can only find sample frequency but no 16/24bit to choose.

[Aloysius]

Ableton Live Preferences - Audio Tab

[DeepFiber]

Under the audiotab I find what soundcard I have and if I want to use asio/dx, latency, clock etc.

In the middle there is "settings" and there I can only choose sample rate, latency compensation and ins/out configuration.

Bottom row is test-tone freq and simulation of cpu usuage.
But nowhere to set the bits.

Under the "defaults" tab I find Audio recording, and there I can choose file type, bit depth and folder to record in, the thing is, I dont record external sounds, I just play with the synths so I dont know if it even matters if I change it to 24bit?

I'm on ableton 5.

[justin3am]

I could be wrong but I believe Live always operates at 64bit float (or 32bit float pre Live 7). You can choose the bit depth of the files created when you record or bounce audio but you can't change the bit depth of the internal signal path.

[DeepFiber]

Ok so its better than 16 bit when I work with it by default. Cool.

[soundpeaks]

There is no such thing as the bit depth of a project in Ableton. It might operate at 64-bit float internally but it imports audio files as 16-bit and is kind of bad. I don't think there is a way to change that. And it is not the way other DAWs handle this.

[jupiter8]

I just play with the synths so I dont know if it even matters if I change it to 24bit?

It doesn't.

[legendCNCD]

There is no such thing as the bit depth of a project in Ableton. It might operate at 64-bit float internally but it imports audio files as 16-bit and is kind of bad. I don't think there is a way to change that. And it is not the way other DAWs handle this.

What? Any info about this? At least for me Live shows 24/48 for the files I threw into channels.

[whyterabbyt]

There is no such thing as the bit depth of a project in Ableton. It might operate at 64-bit float internally but it imports audio files as 16-bit and is kind of bad. I don't think there is a way to change that. And it is not the way other DAWs handle this.

Evidence please.

[soundpeaks]

Evidence please.

What evidence do you need about Ableton's project settings? There simply doesn't exist any option that says "Project Bit Depth" which you can choose.

[Spitfire31]

There is, of course, a setting for bit depth of audio that you record into Ableton Live:

Settings…, seventh flap [Record Warp Launch], second item from top: Record – Bit Depth. You can chose 16, 24 or 32.

[jupiter8]

Evidence please.

What evidence do you need about Ableton's project settings? There simply doesn't exist any option that says "Project Bit Depth" which you can choose.

But that's an mp3? That's rather pointless to import as anything other than 16 bit. The 32 bit wav works fine?

[whyterabbyt]

Evidence please.

What evidence do you need about Ableton's project settings? There simply doesn't exist any option that says "Project Bit Depth" which you can choose.

That looks like an older version of Live, as it doesnt match what Im seeing in Live12 or Live11 but anyway, its nots actually evidence that Live reduces the bitdepth of files it loads.

For a start, you picked the MP3, and there's no such thing as a real bitdepth for MP3 files. And bitdepth quantization occurs within the MP3 process, before data compression is done.

But what you're seeing there isnt the bitdepth of the file after import, its what Live is assessing the bitdepth of the file to be. Perhaps you could provide a screeengrab of the equivalent in some other audio application?

I find it odd that there's no image equivalent for the uncompressed file.

Just for the record, when I load in a file guaranteed to be 24-bit, into Live 12 or Live 11, the equivalent text shows the correct bitdepth for the file. This is with Live set to a Recording BitDepth of 24-bit, by the way.

24_bit_fixed.WAV 48.0kHZ 24-Bit 2 Ch

Also, when I load in a file guaranteed to be 32-bit, the equivalent text also shows the correct bitdepth of the file. This is also with Live set to a Recording BitDepth of 24-bit, by the way.

32_bit_float.WAV 48.0kHz 32-Bit 2 Ch

The fact that the information displayed for the 32-bit float sample reflects the file settings, even when the Record Bit Depth is 24-bit indicates to me that the file is not being converted or quantized to a lower bitdepth.

I can upload screenshots if necessary.

In other words, the thing in Live you're using as 'evidence' is showing me the bitdepth of the file, is not an indication that Live has altered the bitdepth, its an indication of the bitdepth of the file.

And actually, given the fact that your MP3 cant possible be 32-bit as you claim, and that you didnt show the details for that one, Im a bit suspicious about the alleged 32-bit wavefile.

If you want to convince me, please show me what you're seeing when you try these same samples as I used, you can get them from the following webpage

https://www.sounddevices.com/sample-32- ... wav-files/

[whyterabbyt]

There is, of course, a setting for bit depth of audio that you record into Ableton Live:

Settings…, seventh flap [Record Warp Launch], second item from top: Record – Bit Depth. You can chose 16, 24 or 32.

There is, but even with that set to 24-bit, my test indicates that Live 12 and Live 11 still identify the bitdepth of a clip that is an imported 32 bit WAV file as being 32 bit.
It is, I guess possible that Live is quantizing MP3 files to 16-bit, as per soundpeak's screenshot, but if it is doing that (which is not actually proven, it could even be being quantized by the MP3 encoder as Ive said) that would seem a sane implementation to me given the nature of a lossy codec like MP3.

However soundpeaks did claim this quantization applied for all audio import, which does not appear to be the case.