best way of converting 24 bit samples

[mutul]

How to convert 24 bit WAV samples to SP-555 own ones to retain best possible sound? Do they stay 24 bit after conversion or get down to 16 bits? If they get converted to 16bit, wouldn't it be best to use an Apogee dithering plugin in Cubase first to dither down to 16 bit and then convert to sp format?

[blavatsky]

i use formatfactory, I think you can specify rate and such.
I don't really worry about dithering though.

[mutul]

I know all that. What I wanna know is: are the sp555 format samples 24 or 16bit (if converting 24bit WAVs)? If they stay 24bit I don't have to dither down at all.

[cartesia]

nobody knows, roland use their own format on the 404 & 555

just try it and see how it sounds

[sharpmotif]

Samples must be either 16 or 8 bit and 44.1kHz. IIRC trying to import samples with another bit depth will result in an error. Importing with a different sampling rate will sound kinda like messing with the TIME parameter.

I´ve tried importing/exporting through the SP-555 itself, the Roland converter software and through USB. It seems to me that it doesn´t really matter how it gets there, once it´s compressed it will sound basically the same.

[cartesia]

I think he means what is the internal format, not what format should they be to import

[sharpmotif]

Like you said, nobody really knows. SOS review says 2:1 compression. It´s definitely under 16bit and 44.1kHz fixed.

[mutul]

Thanks guys for the info! Despite SP compression, using Apogee dithering when converting 24 to 16bit is still worth a try I guess.