Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn

[sessiondude]

Sorry, there should be a "special" section for the slower people. What's dither? [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Mr_Seven]

http://www.earlevel.com/Digital%20Audio/Dither.html

Have fun!

[JMS40]

What was most interesting to me, was that Digi recommends dither on Master fader bounces even when working with 16 bit sessions. There are internal processes going on at higher bit rates. (Page 321 Reference guide.)
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by sessiondude:
Sorry, there should be a "special" section for the slower people. What's dither? [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Bastiaan]

go to www.waves.com and download the manual for L1 or L2. There it is explained in detail. In short its some kind of noise-reduction for digitaly induced noise when converting bitrates/depth

[Jaleo]

I must be missing something in my bounce mixes. I have used the dither plugin once. I used it only because it was recommended by I don't know who...Since I didn't notice any difference in the mix without dither, I have not used it since. My mixes (IMHO) sound professional to everyone who hears them. What am I supposed to get out of a dither plugin?

[Jaleo]

I do all my tracking in 24 bit, 44.1 or 48 kHz...Just for fun I'm going to add dither the master fader after the compressor in a couple of sessions to see if I can hear a difference in a couple of different bounced mixes. I'll report back in a couple of days.

Jaleo

[Mark_Knecht]

Jaleo,
Conceptually you're supposed to get a 'sense of less distortion'. Candidly (and exposing publically just how bad my ears are!!) I think it may not matter much for most loud, pop music, but might matter a lot more for things that are more quiet. Maybe certain passages of orchestral music, or more in times of pop music when it's in a quiet passage. Things that have more dynamics might, it seems to me, be easier to tell if dither was used.

I've been playing a bit with this over the last year, and I can seldom hear the difference.

Cheers,
Mark

[Bastiaan]

Use the l1, and do a bounce to 8-bit with and without dither....you will definitly hear something....

[Phil O'Keefe]

Dither ADDS a small amount of low level noise to the signal. The reason for this is to help overcome a problem inherent in the nature of digital recording systems.

Digital "Quantizes" the signal to discrete, individual "steps". The amount of steps is directly related to the bit rate. At 16 bits, there is over 30,000 possible different "volume steps" available. At 24 bits, there's over a million possible "steps".

When the recorded volume of the signal gets very low (such as when a chord is fading out or on a reverb "tail") the signal will eventually get down to the point where the digital system has to choose between the signal being OFF or ON (at the lowest bit - the LSB). This is where distortion kicks in on a digital system. By adding a very small amount of noise, the response at very low volumes gets smoother and less "grainy".

That's about as simplified as I can explain it. For a more in depth explaination, be sure to check out some of the links mentioned above.

[Jorge442]

Like Phil said dither smoothes the audio with noise so that the transition from 24 to 16 bits has less artifacts.

If it´s working you shouldn´t hear it. Sorta