"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

[2Bdecided]

If it's lossy, don't touch it.

If it's uncompressed, use lossless compression.

If it's already lossless, you could save a surprising amount of space by remove the last four bits (i.e. making it 20-bit). It's hard to imagine any scenario (measurement, analysis, compression, never mind normal listening) where this would be detectable.

While 48kHz/20-bit, 48kHz 16-bit, and 44.1kHz 16-bit should all also be safe, I wouldn't do it, except for compatibility. I like having 24/96 content around to demonstrate that it sounds the same as 44.1kHz/16

With lossless compression, the difference in bitrate between 20/96 and 20/48 won't be as great as 2:1.

Cheers,
David.

[pdq]

With lossless compression, the difference in bitrate between 20/96 and 20/48 won't be as great as 2:1.

Yes, but wouldn't you expect the savings going from 24 bit to 16 bit to be more than a third?

[2Bdecided]

With lossless compression, the difference in bitrate between 20/96 and 20/48 won't be as great as 2:1.

Yes, but wouldn't you expect the savings going from 24 bit to 16 bit to be more than a third?

Yes. Much more.

However, if someone releases a 24/96 5.1 mix with buckets of headroom, I wouldn't feel 100% confident saying that converting 24-bits to 16-bits would be inaudible in every possible circumstance. I'd struggle to find any content that I could ABX, but it's not impossible that something somewhere is recorded/mixed so quietly that the difference can be heard. If anyone mixes 5.1 at the final Dolby reference level (dial norm -31dB), that's obscenely quiet by CD standards.

Cheers,
David.