[Paul Malpas]

To answer the original question, yes, Audition (and any other digital audio recording software) will allow the user to create 16bit 44.1k recordings and to save these as WAVs. Of course it will, and I like the comment about getting another VO! Any VO who hasn’t grasped this is unlikely to have given much capital to mic placement, room reverberation, background noise etc (listen out for the whirring PC fan! Especially if it is sitting on a lightweight desk and humming a tune as well.)

In your case, even if they managed to work out that we have 16 bits (or 24) and 44.1kHz (or 48 or 96), I suspect the original recording was saved as 128k MP3 and any further detail is lost forever, even if it is subsequently converted to WAV – like making a high quality print from a photocopied source.

And don’t be convinced by 128k MP3 files sounding passable on casual listening. A great deal of subtlety is lost at 128k, the sort that will show up when played out on HD and compared against CDs and BD sound tracks. They even lack some emetional impact when used in soundscapes and punch effects or music in the theatre. This all may sound a little rarefied for some tastes, but with Dropbox accounts, why compromise a few MB on a file that is the product of hours of work and years of training.

A couple of years have passed since the original posting. Perhaps the shock at why a 128 MP3 would ever be considered for broadcast suggests that in just those 2 years we have woken up to what our ears are telling us. That, and TB hard disks and 20MB broadband!