Harry Houdini wrote:
Here's another paper favoring fixed point:

http://www.jamminpower.com/main/articles.jsp

Are you referring to the one titled "48-BIT INTEGER PROCESSING
BEATS 32-BIT FLOATING POINT FOR PROFESSIONAL AUDIO APPLICATIONS"?

That sort of only stands to reason. I bet 64-bit floating point
would beat 48-bit integer too. And 48-bit integer probably also
beats 32-bit integer. And 64-bit floating point probably beats
32-bit floating point.

Also, 48-bit integer probably does NOT beat 32-bit floating point
if you don't watch your ranges and you only end up using 16 bits
of your 48 because the upper 32 are all zero.

With 32-bit IEEE floating point, you have only 24 bits of mantissa.
If you are eventually converting to 24 bit integer at the end, it's
definitely possible you could loose some precision that could be
detected even in the finished product. OF COURSE 48-bit won't suffer
from that (unless you really screw up) since its integer part is
twice as many bits as 24.

Floating point is not magic. You only get as much true precision
as the mantissa allows for. Just because 32-bit floating point
has a wider range of possible values than 32-bit integer does not
mean you are getting something for nothing with 32-bit floating
point.

- Logan