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Stereo Dithered Mixer
I've been reading the Digidesign 48bit mixer white paper & haven't been able to find an answer to this question, so I thought I'd ask it here in the hopes of getting some straight answers.
I've been thinking alot about the 'stereo dithered mixer' plug-in for Pro Tools HD & after doing some research I can't seem to find out at what point the 24bit dither is applied to the master output? It can't be post fader because the fader is pre-insert on the master which would defeat the dither if plugins were inserted. So an educated guess would be that it must be applied after the last plug-in insert right? If this is the case it seems redundant in many ways. For example if you had an L2 or Ozone with 24bit TPDF dither on it why would you need Digi's dither? More to the point the plug-in bus truncates to 24bits on the I/O of each plugin inserted so you are already adding 24bit truncation distortion between plug-ins before the output is dithered to 24bits so how is Digidesign's 'dithered mixer' going to be of any sonic benefit at all if plug-ins or hardware inserts are used? I have been running the dithered mixer in Pro Tools for years, but then after a recent thread on Glenn Meadows mastering webboard regarding 24bit dither, I got to thinking about how this works in Pro Tools HD & wondered where the dither is actually applied using the dithered mixer plugin. Anywhere it's put I can see potential for problems. Or am I missing something? I think it's time Digidesign upgraded the precision of the plug-in bus, if the mix bus can run at 48bit why can't this be maintained right through the plug-in bus as well? I understand that it would use more DSP but sonic precision does come at a cost. At least we should have the option to turn this on just like the stereo dithered mixer plug-in. I think some of the native DAW's are heading in the right direction with high definition 64bit floating point precision maintained all the way through & they do sound incredible. soundBlade, Samplitude, Sonar & Sequoia all come to mind here. Matt |
#2
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
I would say it is added post master fader and pre first insert. Signal is always truncated to 24 bits in inserts and aux inputs in Pro Tools TDM, so the only way to keep the 48 bits resolution of the TDM mixer is to dither before the signal being truncated in the input insert or aux. If it was post inserts there would be a 48 to 24 bits non-dithered truncation in the first insert of the master fader, and dither would be redundant since the last plug-in it is dithering its output to 24 bits and the wordlenght is the same between the last output insert and master output since there is no level change involved there.
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#3
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
I have been working with pro tools for recording mixing and mastering for 7 years after quite some time having used "classic" studio gear.
Sure, 888/24 + MIX, had problems getting clean mixes in the box Then for me came the "beta" dithered mixer, AD8000 and sony oxford eq : HUGE improvement. *Really* deep sonic perspective, stuff that was meant to sit "behind" in the mix actually sounded behind, with the right perspective. Now HD with I/O96 and still my trusted ad8000 (still using oxford eq type 3 a lot), 24 bit 48k, and even *more* depth and perpective, sweet sound Is there room for technical improvement in pro tools ? Of course there is, but speaking of dither hiss (audible on sessions with many tracks and plugs) I found it to be actually a *plus*. I believe that this is actually adding "air" to the recording. Call me crazy but I trust my ears on this Quote:
I firmly believe that criticism about Pro Tools has been beneficial, because Digi worked so that it sounds better than ever before (once you eliminate the plugs that actually have vastly inferior audio qualities than the host system) I think that problem now lies elsewhere: I am not sure we have gotten the most of this system. This have moved so fast lately that I believe that we are many still on the learning curve Speaking for myself I find my recent stuff to sound better than two years ago when I got the HD system, and that gives me motivation to further the search for better sound. The white paper on the mixer has at least reassured me as to the technical quality of the system. So IMHO, at this stage I think that If you scale your levels properly, avoid overloading plugins, choose your plugins ruthlessly, (that is trusting your ears better than the nice GUI) and work on your monitoring acoustics, it might make these questions of where the dithering is taking place a little further down on the priority list... an entirely subjective viewpoint of course !
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Mark Haliday France, Rochefort 17300 Mixing & Mastering, Writer, Teacher Pro Tools Ultimate & Carbon M2 Max Studio |
#4
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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Really the best way to implement precision in a DAW is to run it at the highest resolution through the entire path. In the case of TDM this would be 48bit (with 56bit accumulator) all the way through & dither the final output to 24bits on the way out. While the HD mixer has come a long way from previous versions, it is still a far cry from perfect & if you could compare what a 64bit floating point DAW sounds like to HD you would understand why I am mentioning this. Anyway food for thought... Matt |
#5
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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I have come to listen to both sides : sometimes they agree, sometimes, they are right alternatively. So taking sides is difficult. When (I actually witnessed this) in the eighties, manufacturers where telling us that never ever would anything beyond 16 bit be necessary, I actually believed them (!). Then came the hi fi crowd saying how bad it all sounded. Sure they seeemd a litlle wacky at first until manhy realised they where partially right. Again when some people in 2000/2001 started questionning the pro tools mix bus, I was tempted to brush those comments away until the dithered mix plugin proved that they where right But today I believe that the quality gap between a properly used HD system with dithered mixer, and the consumer is today the *main* problem. I think that we are doing stuff with today level of quality that won't be ridiculous in twenty years time, unlike some stuff recorded and mixed in the eighties Technical perfection is not really useful unless some real audible progress is made. I think that for many of us, the present level of the hd dithered mixer is ok... until prooved wrong ;-)
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Mark Haliday France, Rochefort 17300 Mixing & Mastering, Writer, Teacher Pro Tools Ultimate & Carbon M2 Max Studio |
#6
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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There is many ways to colour sound in a musical way, plug-ins or outboard. Generally speaking, the most musical distortion & colour comes from valves, transformers or tape (the real stuff sounds far better then any of the digital emulations). I don't believe the DAW should contribute to 'the sound' of a project perse. The whole point of digital is to capture the analog source as true to the source as possible without taking the quality of the signal downhill. This starts with the quality of your converters, the precision & sample rate used to capture the source signal & how the DAW handles the audio from start to finish. Quote:
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Matt |
#7
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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IMO additive dither from plug-ins is far from being a problem, 100 24 bits dither generations would be needed to increase the noise floor in 20 dB, and that would be 120 dB of dynamic range, no many converters can accomplish that and I don´t think it can be audible in the real world. I agree with you respect running the highest resolution through the entire path would be better, specially for getting rid of all the points were signal can be clipped without being noticed if you are not careful with levels, such as aux tracks and some plug-ins that don't show when their inputs are clipping. Ironically it is not a problem at all in LE. Cheers, Daniel. |
#8
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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Matt |
#9
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
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100 24 bits dither generations per track would be needed to equal the noise of your great -120dBFS noise floor converters and therefore building up the noise floor by only 3dB. So given a session with 100 plug-ins in each track (I know there are only 5 inserts) your final noise floor would be only 3dB louder than in a session with no plug-ins at all, independently of the amount of compression and limiting you use. Cheers, Daniel |
#10
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Re: Stereo Dithered Mixer
I guess I have a simple question here
Do you guys reccomend the stereo dithered mixer for mixing in the box or do you leave the dithered mixer in the unused folder...unused |
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