64bit applications are able to use more computer resources than 32bit stuff (meaning you can do things like run heavier RAM taxing plugins). Also, a lot of DAW's are 64bit now, and if your operating system and plugins are too, then everything will - to put it simply - just get along much nicer.

However, 32 bit VSTs won't work in a 64 bit host.  So, you either gotta use somethin' like jBridge to wrap your 32 bit VSTs (which is a bit flakey, we're discussing this in another thread), or you just don't use the VST.

Or unless you're using FL Studio - 32bit plugins can be bridged to work in a 64bit version of FL (but not always in a stable way)

My piece of advice is to find out what your computer is running on (32 or 64 bit) Before installing your DAW of choice, because if you have per-say 32 Bit FL loaded on a 64 bit computer, your computer is going to have to work much harder to bridge the gap as opposed to if it was running 64 bit which is just right for it. Just some advice for beginners ^.^

That's not accurate.  32 bit software on a 64 bit OS/CPU is not going to make more work for your CPU, and 64 bit software isn't even going to run on a 32 bit OS/CPU.  (Not that you can find a 32 bit CPU any more, and haven't been able to for a good decade or so.) 


At the level where software actually executes, the machine language, the 64 bit CPUs still have full support for the 32 bit operands... they don't have to do any translation or anything like that.  The difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit operands is the size of the registers that it uses - essentially, how wide a "word" is.


However, 32 bit software running on a 64 bit CPU will mean that your CPU isn't being fully utilized - when a 64 bit CPU does a math operation, it is capable of twice as much accuracy as a 32 bit CPU (assuming you're working in floating point, which most internal audio production is these days - if your DAW is NOT internally floating point, it's probably time to retire it).  That accuracy is nice, but not terribly important... especially since your FP mixing is 32 bit... the CPU will have the extra width for accuracy while it's doing the math, but once it stores the result into memory, it's going to chop most of that accuracy off.


Now, if you're not doing FP math, then a 64 bit CPU can work with much larger numbers, but this is not something that means anything in audio production.


The biggest hard difference between 32 bit and 64 bit, as it related to audio production, is how much memory you can address.  At a hardware level, there's bus speed and some other things as well, but you aren't using a 32 bit CPU, even if you're running a 32 bit OS on top of it... 32 bit CPUs are soooo last millenium.   

Basically, 64bit daws and plugins won't crash as much

Thank you everybody!

I certainly could do with FL crashing a bit less....

Basically a 32 Bit DAW can only address a maximum of up to 4GB of ram, so if your computer has more than that, your DAW won't use the rest. 64-bit on the other hand can handle up to 128GB so will make more use of the resources you have available.

You only really see a big different with it if you're using a sampler with large sample libraries like Kontakt which dumps them into the RAM.

However, 32 bit software running on a 64 bit CPU will mean that your CPU isn't being fully utilized - when a 64 bit CPU does a math operation, it is capable of twice as much accuracy as a 32 bit CPU (assuming you're working in floating point, which most internal audio production is these days - if your DAW is NOT internally floating point, it's probably time to retire it).  That accuracy is nice, but not terribly important... especially since your FP mixing is 32 bit... the CPU will have the extra width for accuracy while it's doing the math, but once it stores the result into memory, it's going to chop most of that accuracy off.

This is not quite correct either. The floating point parts of the 32 bit CPUs have been handling 64 (and 80) bit floats for quite some time, I think as far back as the 386DX and beyond (i.e. back in the 80's).