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That's Bitter

Posted by Jim F. (A) on December 23, 2009 at 21:28:42

In Reply to: RE: Ha! It looks like. . . posted by Tony Lauck on December 23, 2009 at 17:03:43:

> I have no idea about how the Soundforge plug ins are interfaced.

I just discovered a nifty utility -- something I'd been
hoping to find.

There's a 64-bit VST bit meter called "Schwa Bitter". It's free,
from:
http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=33

This is the only bit meter I've seen that goes all the way
to 64 bits.

You can use it to see what your other plugins (and your DAW's
processing engine) are doing to the bit depth. Just load
a file, load Bitter anywhere in your Effects chain,
and start the file playing.

For instance, Sonar 8, if the "64-bit engine" is enabled,
not only reads and writes 64-bit floating-point files,
but if you do something like change the gain, all 64 bits
in the file **really are** active after that.

However, if you then read that same file into Soundforge 10
and start it playing, bitter will show only 32 of the 64 bits as
active.

Bitter itself is 64 bits in and 64 bits out, as you can
verify by loading multiple copies of it in Sonar 8.
(Sonar also indicates which of your VST plugins are 32 bit
and which are 64 bit, by putting hash marks in the
little FX window underneath the name of the plugin.
Two hash marks for stereo 32-bit, four hash marks for
stereo 64-bit. Bitter shows with the expected 4 hash
marks.

Interestingly, while iZotope Ozone 4, billed as a
"64-bit plug-in", and which also shows up with 4 hash
marks when loaded in Sonar 8, **only** ever outputs
32 bits, according to Bitter.

Maybe Ozone is inputting 64 bits (or maybe not), and
presumably it's processing internally at 64 bits,
but I guess it expects to be the last thing in your
chain.

As you say, none of this is earth-shatteringly significant,
but it's fun to see what's going on.

I suppose you could even load Bitter in something like
Foobar, with the appropriate VST wrapper
(Maybe foo_dsp_vstwrap.dll
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=59206
No, I haven't tried it.)

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