"Dithering" over reducing the bitrates of my collection, Should i reduce my 24/96 surround material to 16/44.1? Options

[BearcatSandor]

Folks,

I've got quite a bit of 24/96 material on my computer that is in 5.1 surround. Given that most of us accept it as true that 16/44.1 vs 24/96 makes no audiable difference, is there any reason not to dither these files down to 16/44.1 in 5.1 channels?

It would save me disc space, reduce my network activity and also reduce my CPUs cock cycles.

Thanks

[BearcatSandor]

..cock cycles.. Yeah, that's what i get for posting at 2:30 am. So far i don't have any bluray porngraphy, so dithering that to 16-bit is not an issue.

I did forget to mention that my files are in wavpack, if that makes any difference. I guess i'll just try it.

Anyone have any reccomendations for a good linux commandline tool to do this transparently? Mencoder? Sox?

Thanks for the responces.

[skamp]

Anyone have any reccomendations for a good linux commandline tool to do this transparently? Mencoder? Sox?

caudec version 1.3.5 can do it easily (it uses sox). Run something like this:

CODE

$ caudec -o /path/to/new/dir -n 1 -b 16 -r 48000 -c wv /path/to/files/*.wv

Let me know if you try it and run into any problems. There's an AUR package if you run Arch Linux.