Pex `Mahoney` Tufvesson wrote:
Still, you must agree with me on this... at more quiet passages in the music, you will not have 16-bit resolution anymore. (which, by today's dithering is somewhere around 19-bit resolution, but that's not the point here...). What I'm saying is that if the output-level is -18dB, there are some "unused bits", and the "signal to quantization-noise ratio" gets worse.
Whether you are constantly using all 16 bits in a recording is of no importance. In fact it would be ridiculous to say that music should constantly be using all the bits, since there would then be absolutely *no* dynamics ever (much like radio play). This is the same as saying that any film should constantly have something moving in the picture or all films should be in colour all the time.
Music needs dynamics to have an emotional and musical impact, if everything is loud all the time, nothing is loud, and all impact is lost. It's like the old saying, "if everything was green, what is green then?".
-18dBFS signals are rare in any kind of popmusic today, but do sometimes appear in classical or some accoustic/jazz recordings. Recorded properly with correct use of dithering, I hear no quantization noise on most records. But removing soft passages (or rather heavy downward compressing with post make-up gain of these passages) would defy the purpose and inner dynamics of any classical/jazz recording, and any potential quantization noise would be of much less importance than destroying a piece of music by annihilating the dynamics.
In conclusion, if any given piece of music is recorded properly in 24 bits, using internal dithering in plug ins while mixing (to avoid internal truncation in plug ins due to the expanded processing data), and the final mix is dithered to 16 bits using POW-r or IDR, and the dBFS level is around -3dB to -0.2 (rather -3dB to avoid post D/A clipping in most cd-players as described in the TC Electronic studies), it is a perfect master in these respects.
So I guess I don't agree at all (at least from what I understood of your opinion).
BTW I feel like a total nerd discussing these issue here
I just hope no-one points fingers at me!
4800 euro for each, means 9600 a pair, so it is more here 
