Dither down now or later?

[asi9]

We have some tracks that are 48khz..... obviously, before it goes to cd, it has to be in 44khz. We should have recorded at 44khz to begin with, I know, but now the dilemna is:

Should we dither down now to 44, or should we wait and do the conversion during the mastering phase?

Will dithering down before we process them bring out the artifacts.... or hide them?

[asi9]

Oh yeah, they're 24 bit wave files.

[chessrock]

Dithering should be your very last step before burning.

[Newest User]

Chessrock is right

[dobro]

Newest User is right.

[VOXVENDOR]

Dobro is wrong.

[Newest User]

See two rights do make a wrong




But Im left.. handed, so technically Im in my right mind, psycologically typing though...

No I don't have a split personality...all five of them are independant of each other.

[UberGawkman]

What if Voxvender was wrong about Dobro being wrong?

[twist]

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

[UberGawkman]

Unless you make a right (or 3 lefts) onto the wrong way of a one way street.

[chessrock]

Actually, technically-speaking we're all wrong, because you don't "dither" from 48khz to 44 (read his question again).

[UberGawkman]

Yeah, I reallized that but was too lazy to change it. Sample rate conversion... dither..... what's the difference?

I'm gonna go boil me some Hot Pockets now...

[TexRoadkill]

Dithering involves shortening the word length i.e. 24bit to 16bit. The actual Dithering process adds some random noise in the high frequency range which for very technical reasons can help maintain stereo seperation and increased dynamic range. A dithered 16bit recording can have the same dynamic range of an undithered 20bit recording.

This site has some great tutorials on digital audio www.digido.com

[chessrock]

Originally posted by UberGawkman
I'm gonna go boil me some Hot Pockets now...

I didn't realize people boiled Hot Pockets. Have I been doing it wrong all these years sticking it in the microwave?

[asi9]

Yes. Or you can do the same to a Tombstone pizza and then dither it down to a single slice.... and if you add a little parmesian cheese, it will have the same stomach-filling capacity as 4 slices of pizza.

[UberGawkman]

Originally posted by asi9
Yes. Or you can do the same to a Tombstone pizza and then dither it down to a single slice.... and if you add a little parmesian cheese, it will have the same stomach-filling capacity as 4 slices of pizza.

AHHHH!!!! I just reallized I'm probably confusing people.......


asi9 = me..... I reset my cookies one day at work and couldn't find my old password, but I found one for an older account (UberGawkman), so I just started using that. I was posting as asi9 at home, because that computer is still logged in as asi9 and I forgot....

[RWhite]

Mix to 24 bit, master as 24 bit, then the last step before burning a CD is dither to 16 bit.

[NYMorningstar]

Originally posted by asi9
We have some tracks that are 48khz..... obviously, before it goes to cd, it has to be in 44khz. We should have recorded at 44khz to begin with, I know, but now the dilemna is:

Should we dither down now to 44, or should we wait and do the conversion during the mastering phase?

Will dithering down before we process them bring out the artifacts.... or hide them?

You should add any effects to the tracks while in the higher sampling rate. Before you can mix them however, you will have to convert the tracks to the same sampling rate. You will have to export the tracks you intend to change to an editing program to change the sampling rate and then do your mixing. Mix at the highest bit rate you can and dither to 16 bit as the last step before burning.