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Bit depth change when saving Sound object as WAV

Pablo Arantes
 

Dear Paul,

I have a sound file recorded with 24-bit depth. When I select and extract part of it using "Extract part" and use "Save as WAV file" to save this extracted part, I get a 16-bit sound. Is it the expected behavior? Is there a way to instruct Praat to preserve bit depth when saving in WAV format? I'm using Praat's latest version on a machine running Ubuntu 22.04. The same happens when using the same version of Praat on a Windows 10 machine.

Best,

Pablo

Boersma Paul
 

Dear Pablo,

a Sound object in Praat doesn't remember the bit depth of the WAV file that it was read from. Sound is represented in Praat's memory as 64-bit floating-point, i.e. with at least 53-bit precision. If you modify a Sound in Praat, this is all done in 64-bit floating-point, never in 16 or 24 bits.

When saving a Sound to file, you have to choose the bit depth yourself. For 16 bit, choose "Save as WAV file...". For 24 bit, choose "Save as 24-bit WAV file...". For 32 bit, choose "Save as 32-bit WAV file...". For 53+ bits, choose "Save as binary file...".

Best wishes,
Paul

On 15 Mar 2023, at 21:55, Pablo Arantes via groups.io <pabloarantes@...> wrote:

Dear Paul,

I have a sound file recorded with 24-bit depth. When I select and extract part of it using "Extract part" and use "Save as WAV file" to save this extracted part, I get a 16-bit sound. Is it the expected behavior? Is there a way to instruct Praat to preserve bit depth when saving in WAV format? I'm using Praat's latest version on a machine running Ubuntu 22.04. The same happens when using the same version of Praat on a Windows 10 machine.

Best,

Pablo


_____

Paul Boersma
Professor of Phonetic Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, room 632
1012VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/

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