Ok im. confused...
My mastering engineer sent me a 16 bit wav file...I sent this to CDbaby for distribution. CD baby ask for a 16 bit wav file and no other format.
In conversation with the mastering engineer over Facebook chat.

Hey Guys,
My first ever post, sorry if not the correct place or if already been addressed elsewhere;

I am currently looking to upgrade the way I mix music. Currently, I have a fast track ultra and I'm just using a pair of 50$ monitor headphones. I have done test recordings of 16 bit, 44.1 Khz vs. 24 bit 96 khz recordings, and I cannot hear a shred of difference. (I know my fast track ultra is capable of recording that bit rate). So I'm thinking it's the fact that I use crappy headphones.

Currently running Sonar 6, Dell Pentium IV w/ MOTU 828 mkII firewire... and whatever stock sound card my computer has.

I assume there have been ample discussions of this in the past, but I cannot find any applicable threads to read using the search feature of this forum. Can anyone point me to these discussions?

If for whatever reason the discussion gets restarted here, these are my thoughts/assumptions:

I assume that higher resolution means better sound quality.

Found this thread,thought it may help someone,it helped me. http://www.compulink.co.uk/~davedorn/computing/sound/24bit1.htm

Hi all,
I've been lurking around here a lot, but now have a question of my own. With a recent project, I decided to mixdown to 24bit/44khz, instead of 16bit/44Khz which is what I have done in the past. After mastering the audio, I was puzzled by this sharp harsh sounding noise i'd get when playing back the file and boosting around the 16khz area.

I've always been somewhat skeptical on this topic, and I hope someone can inform me of any mistakes I may be making.

when is it best to record in which bit depth? i understand that the bit depth is is relative to loudness in dB's (each bit = 3 dB i think?), but still don't quite grasp when to record in which. i'd assum 24 bit, then dither down to 16 bit to go to CD in the mastering process, but i am not sure if this is correct. any help, links, suggestions would be great! thanks

Greetings Forumsters -