Output Dither

[NewHere]

Originally Posted by Wolfgang Eller

When Bob and Paul chimed in your same discussion at GS you knew the answer already.

Nobody chimed in on "my discussion", I found a big thread about dithering while reading through Paul Frindles posts on GS. It got me interested, so I looked up what PTs manual has to offer in that regard and FALSELY concluded that PT is dithering to 24 bits by default, which I posted over there. It got pointed out to me that I was wrong, so I came here for "official" clarification with Avid (see quotes from manual here or on GS), that was the one and only question I had. See post #32, that is all I came here for.

You kept on pushing your agenda in a very condescending manner and even though I have agreed with you (yes, it gets masked) you wouldn't stop. Telling me that I should end the thread (simply stay away), how I really recorded things, what really was the point of my thread, what answers I already knew... sheesh!

What I wrote here is the same as there: Distortion is happening below noise floor (no doubt in that!), some say it's beneficial to prevent this distortion. To find out if it makes any difference to ME (not you) I have to try it out for myself in my day to day process, maybe only to conclude that it doesn't make any difference at all. To some that seems like blasphemy, because they already told me what to think (hint: that's you).

So with all due respect, who is trolling whom?

[Bob Olhsson]

The reason for eliminating the distortion is that it masks the lowest level detail, typically reverberation and spatial information. Contrary to common assumptions, noise floors are by no means opaque. Unfortunately, once that detail has been masked by truncation distortion, there is no getting it back and the use of dither becomes far less obvious.

I didn't understand this until I returned to recording live sessions rather than overdubs. The need for 24 bit dither became obvious as did the advantage of recording at 96 kHz.

[NewHere]

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences!

Earlier you asked for dither plugin suggestions and mentioned some. Due to lack of experience I can't make any viable suggestions, but would be interested in what you think the differences are. I don't mean technical like noise shapes, but what are you listening for when evaluating different dither plugins?

[Bob Olhsson]

I'm only using them for monitoring because I print most everything to 32-bit. MAAT LINearise is newer and its design engineer, Dr. Christoph Musialik is a legend. You can also use one of the 20-bit included dither plug-ins for monitoring.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I'm only using them for monitoring because I print most everything to 32-bit. MAAT LINearise is newer and its design engineer, Dr. Christoph Musialik is a legend. You can also use one of the 20-bit included dither plug-ins for monitoring.

So you use the dither on the output and you can actually hear the difference? I suppose on very low db tails and such? Very good, silent room, and supreme monitoring. And good ears, I would guess!

[Bob Olhsson]

I hear it and my clients sitting beside me hear it provided the source is microphones and it's well recorded. The room doesn't even need to be all that quiet to hear the imaging.