Tracks at different bit rates question

[Jeff Leites]

As I mentioned in my last thread, I have .wav files for all the track from my bands recording at Robbie Krieger's studio. This past week I used Audacity to patch up some flubs in my lead guitar tracks. That worked out pretty well (close enough for government work anyway ). If I drag all of a tunes tracks back into Audacity, including my corrected lead track, all the tracks line up, end at the same point, and everything is in sync. However, I noticed in Windows Explorer that my fixed lead tracks are all different sizes than the rest of the tracks for every tune. For example, all the tracks for a particular tune in Windows Explorer are 20,211, while my fixed lead track is 20,697. When I check to properties of the files, I saw that the bit rate of the original tracks is 1152kbps, and the bit rate from Audacity is 1536kbps. As I said, it all still works together in Audacity. What concerns me is that in a couple of weeks, we're going back to the studio to have the tracks "professionally" mixed. I want my corrected lead tracks used, and I'm wondering if they will work with his software (I still don't know what he uses) as well as it does with Audacity.

[Anderton]

It could be a bit resolution thing or maybe different sample rates...does Audacity provide file info (bit resolution and sampling rate)? These days the better software programs will sample-rate convert on the way in so that if, for example, you want to bring a 48 kHz file into a 44.1 kHz project, the 48 kHz file will be converted. But, then you open the Pandora's Box of the quality of the DAW's sample rate converters, which can vary considerably (for a comparative analysis, check out SRC Comparisons.

 

Bit resolution isn't an issue; it really doesn't matter whether the project has higher resolution than the files, or the files have higher resolution than the project.