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

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

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!!

2

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?

3

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.

4

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.

5

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

6

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…

7

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?

8

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.