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If you're mixing down directly from 24-bit to 16-bit MP3, that in itself is probably bad news. Unless you have a fairly smart MP3 encoder, it's probably just truncating the 24-bit samples to 16-bit, which is usually going to result in very noticeable quantization error (essentially, you're magnifying the existing quantization error in the 24-bit audio).

You really want a decent dithering and noise shaping conversion when you drop from 24-bit to 16-bit. I use those built-in on Sound Forge myself, and there are plenty of other audio tools that do this. You're adding what amounts to a small bit of analog noise, in order to effectively remove the very annoying digital noise. There are a variety of different algorithms... if you're not doing this, give it a try. This is a standard function in most modern DAW tools... I've heard even the open source Audacity has dithering for bit depth conversion. Go to mastering plug-ins like iZtope's Ozone for more advanced approaches. You might also the the free dithering plug-in in the MDA pack: http://mda.smartelectronix.com/

I'm not sure the big argument when CDs came out was about the dynamic range (eg, 16-bit vs. something better). You might argue for or against 44.1kHz vs. 48kHz vs. 96kHz or whatever. No one's going to argue that 24-bit is a waste vs. 16-bit... I think it was just the tech limits of the day that estabilished 16-bit as the CD standard. After all, even today, you'll usually find most 24-bit gear is actually 18-22-bit gear with these in there as "marketing bits". Of course, when you're doing a mix from enough sources, that won't matter anyway... you'll have a true 24-bit product when you're done.

The CD controversy has always been around the claim that most people can't hear beyond 20kHz (true), versus the claim that you can't hear the effect of frequencies beyond 20kHz in music (fals). So for CD, they figure you're pretty safe with the Nyquist frequency a bit over twice that (enough to maybe-kinda-sorta allow for good anti-imaging and anti-aliasing filters based on 1980's technology). Obviously they were wrong.. but in reality, no one will EVER need more than today's high-end specs, 24-bit at 192kHz. Trust me on this :-)

There are loads of (mostly free) VSTs for windows not available on the mac (most smartelectronix stuff, synthedit, and synth1 come to mind). These are usually the kinds of plugins that do "non traditional" stuff for people looking to do more cutting-edge, experimental stuff with their music, which makes windows ideal for this. I'm assuming Wired will run windows VSTs, which is really exciting as it could allow for a more stable, secure and efficient DAW that will run all these great plugins.

Well, most of my new plugins are pretty useless without their custom GUI. Some plugins with a few straightforward parameters work fine with no GUI, but for the fancy stuff a GUI is vital. (In fact, one I'm working on right now has so many settings that it doesn't even use host 'parameters' for most stuff!)

Anyway, if you are happy with no custom GUI, then you will almost certainly be able to load VST plugins as audio units. VSTGUI is the biggest obstacle to switching over in my opinion.

VST is cross platform. The only obstacle to porting VST plugins to linux is the lack of a VST GUI lib (and of course the lack of VST hosts there!).

We've got some good, free VST plugins at Destroy FX (win32, os9, osx)...

I have a page with several popular GPL VST Plugins ("Destroy FX"). If someone were to port VSTGUI to linux, we'd definitely compile our stuff for linux users as well.

I agree, and this is why I think we can finally do without the RIAA. In fact -- I think we can do without copyright on music entirely; there are now plenty of people who can and do make music just for fun and distribute it at very low cost. In such a world, piracy is a feature, not a bug. While I'm at it, here's my site of freeware plugins that you can use in most of these digital music programs: http://www.smartelectronix.com/~destroyfx/

Circuit bending is fun. My bandmate and I used to do this back in high school.. we didn't know what were were doing really, but we got plenty of wacked out sounds.

Nowadays we're a little more deliberate, so we make VST Plugins . The VST architecture is totally simple and pretty portable, so it's easy to crank out plugins if you have crazy effects in mind. This might be a good place to start if you know a little C programming and have some ideas.