Should i use Dithering?

M

Maor

New member
if im working on a song from start to finish, on a 24bit project, recording 24bit audio files through my able sound card, using high quality plugins and midi instruments, bouncing down to a 24bit wave stereo file for mastering, and then going through the mastering phase with the same 24bit mindset. should i, or should i not- enable dithering on my brickwall limiter (which usually comes last on my mastering chain)?

also worth mentioning- im bouncing down the masters as 24bit wave files, and thats what im sending out and uploading (soundcloud etc.). its not going to CD, and if im doing an mp3 im using another convertor.

so, what do you say? yes, no?
and if so, why?
 
Well...if you are goijngj to use it....do it like you plan to, at the last step when coverting down to 44.1/16.

Should you use it...?
People often do, but not everyone. Try it with and without and see what/if you can hear different.
 
I've never (knowingly) use it. Scientifically it makes sense to use it as Miroslav suggested (at the final steps of mastering when converting to 16bit).

Dither - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can people hear the difference? I really couldn't say. My ears are pretty sensitive, and I don't think I can. I've done some experiments in the past and couldn't tell, which is why I still don't bother. There may be certain times it's necessary, and it might even be possible some of my own tools do this for me without my realizing, in order to head-off the issues described on that wikipedia page. [not being formally trained I may be treating this as an academic consideration rather than a practical one for most home recordings (?)] I'm interested in what some of our most experienced members have to say. But my vote (for now) is nay.
 
As has been said dither is usually used when downsampling, to mediate some of the barely audible affects. Since you can't actually hear it anyway, and it's theoretically better, I usually just stick it in there. I guess you wouldn't need it in 24-bit masters cause the error signal is just way too low.

OTOH - the last album I mastered I ended up adding some noise at a level significantly louder than dither just because the fade to digital black between songs felt unnatural to me.
 
It takes 3.5 seconds to set up a dither. That really should void any question about whether to use it or not. It doesn't hurt. Does it help? Maybe. But since it takes 3.5 seconds to set up, just use it. Its not that hard.
 
Simply put, dither randomises the LSB (least significant bit) so that signal can be heard beyond the noise floor. If you can hear truncation distortion, then use it. If you're downsampling, then use it. If you're using outboard summing, use it.

That's about it.

Cheers :)
 
Dither makes a difference. While writing DSP, I have noticed audible differences even at -250dB. It is very subtle, and it is also part of "the character" of a lot of gear. Small saturation or behaviour of components.

However current dithers usually do filtering in the feeback path of the dither-algorithm, and as some have noticed, simpler algorithms have sometimes sounded better. I did a dither plugin, with movable feedback-path filter though, so that the first orders are unfiltered, (and more effective). Google, Ove Karlsen blog, for the beta.

Peace Be With You.
 
ha ha, -250dB. dBfs? That's LOW dude. You'd need an anechoic chamber with ambient noise close to infinity to hear it!

Cheers :)
 
dithering is important. it cleans up the harmonic distortion from the dac. yes, its only measureable, but it could effect the processing gear in a bad way at mastering.

dithering should be applied at mixdown and anytime the signal is looped in/out of the interface.
 
The answer to the OP is: dither immediately before truncating (e.g. from 24 to 16 bit). Since you're recording, mixing, mastering and uploading in 24 bit and presumably the website will do further conversions, you don't need to dither. But it won't hurt anything and it will reduce your file sizes for faster upload, if that even matters these days.

Dithering doesn't pertain to resampling, only truncation. Resampling can be done without doing any dithering.
 
but the enviroment is not 24bit nor the mix bus is 24bit. Steinburg says to do it in a lot of places in thier text/tutorials.

so has many others.......
 
drtechno said:
but the enviroment is not 24bit nor the mix bus is 24bit.
Click to expand...

Well, the files generally are, even if the DAW operates in 32 float.

drtechno said:
Steinburg says to do it in a lot of places in thier text/tutorials.

so has many others.......
Click to expand...

I bet it says that dither gets added automatically with certain kinds of processing. I doubt you have to manually dither anything other than the final mastered file.
 
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