Exporting 24bit AIFF results in 16bit file. Bug?

Running into an issue that I cannot resolve. It seems to be a bug, but hopefully I am wrong.

When ripping vinyl, I would like to export my files as 24bit PCM/96kHz files in AIFF. The reason for using AIFF is that this format allows for easier adding of metadata versus .WAV.

When exporting a file out of Audacity by choosing ‘Other uncompressed files’ in the drop-down menu, and choosing ‘Signed 24-bit PCM’ under the encoding drop down menu, the output file is 16bit, NOT 24bit. I have verified this in VLC and in Mediainfo.

I have attached three screenshots.
export as 24 bit AIFF.jpg
The output file:
2.png
Curiously, when exporting a WAV as 24bit PCM, this does work. The output file really is 24 BIT as shown here:
3.jpg
Do I miss a setting perhaps? Advice is greatly appreciated!!

It is a bug. I’ll check if it still occurs in the current alpha build, and if it does I’ll log it on the Audacity bug tracker.

Perhaps use 24-bit FLAC?

That’s weird, I was just trying a few things, and now it has exported as 24-bit AIFF :confused:
I’ll experiment and see if I can figure out what did that.

There seems to be a workaround.

  1. Select a bit of the track and use “Export Selected Audio” to export it as 24-bit WAV.
  2. Then export the entire project in the normal way as 24-bit AIFF.

It seems that the “24-bit” sticks until you export something as 16-bit WAV.

I’ve logged the bug on the Audacity issue tracker.

Thanks for trying to help out! unfortunately, this workaround does not work with my 2.4.2 version of Audacity.
After step 1) - selecting a piece of the track and exporting this selection to 24bit WAV, when I next export the entire project as 24bit AIFF, it still is 16 bit according to MediaInfo…

MediaInfo is probably correct, it usually is.
The workaround is something I found on Linux. I hoped it might also work on Windows but didn’t test.

Is FLAC a viable option for you?

The export is a master. So I will change to WAV as my primary export in Audacity then. Hopefully this will be resolved in near future.