This time the 24 bit flac file was only 29.7MB, so obviously it can't contain 24 bit audio even though it's seen as a 24 bit flac file. I converted the MP3 to 16 bit wave, then converted the wave file to 24 bit flac. When I specified a 24 bit output, the flac file was 51.9MB, so it makes quite a difference. With the bitdepth setting on auto foobar2000 gave me a 16 bit flac file which was 29.4MB. I just tried a few MP3 to flac encodes with foobar2000. If you take the same audio and encode it using a lossy encoder, then convert the lossy version to flac while specifying 24 bit, you'll probably end up with a much larger flac file the second time, because as you're going from a format with no bitdepth to a format which has one, foobar2000 should then give you whatever bit-depth you specify. Foobar2000 doesn't seem to mess with the bitdepth unnecessarily. I'm pretty sure you'll still have 16 bit audio in the flac file. You could probably also test it out by converting a 16 bit wave file to flac while specifying 24 bit. If you go from flac to flac and the file size doesn't change much then I'd assume the original only contains 16 bit audio, even though to foobar2000/MediaInfo etc it's a 24 bit flac file.

One way to test if the 24 bit files really are 24 bit, might be to re-encode one as flac again while specifying 16 as the bit depth. because I don't fully understand how it all works. I'm pretty sure if you convert lossless 16 bit audio to flac (for example) while specifying a bit depth of 24, you'll still only have 16 bit audio but it'll be in a 24 bit container. Ive eve seen is that large ? Are you sure those smaller files really are 24 bit? What is it about it being a DTS from the go that makes it convert so large ,when no other 24/192 2 or multi channel flac Of what i get when i convert this DTS to 24 bit flac

What still confuses me is, i have lossless 24 bit files ( even wave ), 24 /192 ,2 qnd multi channel that are a fraction the size

Dts decoder foobarr