Dither.....and Mastering question

[skylab001]

I am curious if the basic dither plug in PTHD is just as good as other Dithering plugs(ie. iZotopes Ozone3)? I need to export loops and samples from PT, from 24bit to 16bit(various sample rates) for stage playback hardware devices and want the best quality. I wasn't sure however if dithering plugs make a huge difference in sound quality.

And since dithering is a part of mastering......now for the mastering question....I have never tried to master my own material, and have used various mastering studios that charge an arm and a leg. Recently I gave a couple songs to a guy who has been trying to get into mastering, and he offered to do them for free. His masters are comparable to the other mastering houses that I have used, and after talking to him, I guess he uses Pro Tools HD and an all in one mastering plug in, no external hardware.

I am considering trying out one of these "all in one" plugs to see how well I could do the same thing. Does anybody have any plug-in recommendations(I guess Ozone 3 might come up again here too)?

[Matt_G]

Sounds like you've already made your mind up to buy Ozone 3... It is a pretty decent plug-in for a complete ITB 'demo style' mastering solution & has a great limiter & dither module. However, it is no substitute for a mastering engineer's ears, experience or monitoring though. Further more, it is no substitute for mastering hardware (analog EQ's, compressors etc).

In any case it's not a good idea to master your own mixes for a number of reasons the 2 main ones are this... your monitoring is probably less than ideal for mastering purposes & you're likely too close to the project to bring any objectivity to problem areas. A professional mastering engineer will bring a fresh educated perspective to your mixes without being biased & will have all the best tools for mastering your music, including an accurate monitoring environment that they are intimate with.

To answer your question regarding dither, it's a good idea to dither whenever you do any DSP to your audio signal. In particular when you are reducing a wordlength from 24bits to 16bits, this has the most audible impact on your material if it's not dithered prior to truncation. The POW-r dither plug-in that comes with Pro Tools is perfectly fine for this purpose. Personally I prefer iZotope's MBIT+ dither.

Best regards,

Matt