I'm working on a film project, which will be edited in Premiere Pro. I am recording most of the audio at 24/96 .wav files. There will however be some audio files recorded at 16/48 compressed, coming from different sources. This is unfortunately unavoidable. SO, upon digging in the Adobe help sections, I found that if I start my project and set the sequence settings for audio to a sample rate of 96 (or 96,000), Prem Pro WILL NOT CONFORM my 24/96 .wav files. (Pr Pro will not conform uncompressed audio of a supported format if it is brought into a sequnce where the sample rate of the sequence is the same as the clip.) This is great. My 24/96 files will hold their quality all the way through the process. It will however conform the other files such as the 16/48 compressed files.
So here's my question. (Keep in mind that my final product will be exported to 24/96.) I can take all my 16/48 audio files and convert them to uncompressed 24/96 before bringing into Prem Pro and then Prem Pro won't conform them at all. So what will yield the best audio quality - a 16/48 audio file that has been conformed by Prem Pro and then during the export done by Prem Pro converted to 24/96, or will the audio quality be higher if I convert that 16/48 audio file first to 24/96 and then bring it into Prem Pro, where it won't be conformed by Prem Pro at all? In other words, for best audio quality, do I let Prem Pro conform my 16/48 files and then convert them to 24/96 during export, or do I do the 16/48 converstion to 24/96 in another program like Audition?
(((And yes, the higher audio quality matters.)))
Thank you