Bit Depth in Max
Can anyone shed some light on how the concept of Bit Depth is handed in Max? I'm guessing it's related to the I/O and/or Signal Vector size?
you mean how audio is handled in general? it is always 64 bit now (used to be 32 before) then given to you IO driver undithered.
The 64-bit and 32-bit Mac OS isn't referring to the audio bit depth surely? With regard to audio standards e.g. 16-bit and 24-bit audio, the audio status window doesn't state the bit depth of the patch.
The bit depth of the patch is 64.
You can see the bit depth of your audio drivers in MacOS's "Audio MIDI Setup" application.
you never process audio in an integer resolution format (unless your application is fft-only or older than 1995.)
on PCs you use floating point, in many hardware implementations you use fixed point instead.
interesting question why it is nowhere shown or how to check it programmatically. mabye it doesnt make any difference?
there are even a few objects (like for example the tapping buffer) which only works with 32 bit float in max 7 with 64 bit audio turned on.
if you need evidence, try writing 32768 (16 bit + 1), 8388608 (24 bit + 1), 2147483648 (32 bit + 1) and 100000000000000000000000000000000000001. into a buffer~ using peek~.