Embedding 16bit files?

When you embed pre-existent audio material in Ardour it will not modify in anyway the originals, that’s a fact (I hope :slight_smile: ). What 'bout if you are embedding 16bit audio? Do the samples get “promoted” to 32bit float which is JACK’s internal format??? I mean, if I embed 16 bit material on a project I’m not sticking indirectly the whole project to 16bit, am I ???
If the samples are getting promoted, is ardour aplying any kind of dithering? what does it actually do to the original sample to turn it into a 32bit float?

Seba.

you never dither when going to a larger bit width sample, only when reducing the bit width.

ardour reads the 16 bit data from the file and converts it to float format internally by computing what fraction of the max 16 bit sample value the sample really is. this produces a number between -1.0 and +1.0, as used for all other “normal” sample values within a JACK audio graph.