Not really, the full range of human hearing is over 120db. Getting to 120db within 16 bits requires tricks like noise shaping. Otherwise, simple rounding at 16 bits gives about 80db and horrible sounding artifacts around quiet parts.
It's even more complicated in audio production, where 16 bits just doesn't provide enough room for post-production editing.
This is why the API is floating-point. Things like noise shaping need to be encapsulated within the API, or handled at the DAC if it's a high-quality one. (Edit) There's nothing wrong with consumer-grade DACs that are limited to about 80-90db of dynamic range; but the API shouldn't force that limitation on the entire world.
In the same vein, sure, the audio production nodes should use floating point, but for simple playback, which I'd argue is the 90% case, it shouldn't require me to use floats. Real-time audio toolkits like fmod and wwise all work in fixed-point formats on device, because the cost of floats is too expensive for realtime audio.
The floats are only required if you have a complex audio graph -- with a sample-based API, you can totally do the production in floats, and then have a final mix pass which does the render to an Int16Array. All in JavaScript.
> because the cost of floats is too expensive for realtime audio
Round(Sample * 32767) is really that slow?
If you're doing integer DSP, you still need to deal with 16 -> 24, or 24 -> 16 overhead; and then the DAC still is converting to its own internal resolution. (Granted, 16 <-> 24 can be simple bit shifting if aliasing is acceptable.)
Not really, the full range of human hearing is over 120db. Getting to 120db within 16 bits requires tricks like noise shaping. Otherwise, simple rounding at 16 bits gives about 80db and horrible sounding artifacts around quiet parts.
It's even more complicated in audio production, where 16 bits just doesn't provide enough room for post-production editing.
This is why the API is floating-point. Things like noise shaping need to be encapsulated within the API, or handled at the DAC if it's a high-quality one. (Edit) There's nothing wrong with consumer-grade DACs that are limited to about 80-90db of dynamic range; but the API shouldn't force that limitation on the entire world.