Rendering to 16 bit very noisy

[jonny deep]

Hi all. I wonder if anyone can describe how they successfully render to 16 bit without any (or noticeable) noise. I record everything at 24 bit - when I've attempted to render to 16 bit, it sounds awful.

Is there a 'golden' setting I can use or a process to do this successfully? Or should I use a plugin?

[mjbphotos]

I do it all the time and never have a noise issue. Never bother putting dithering it either.

[bouldersoundguy]

Either you're doing something wrong or there's a bug in your installation of Reaper. Truncating to 16 bit should just raise the noise floor from extremely low to very low. Unless you recorded at extremely low levels that look like straight lines on the waveform display neither 24 or 16 bit noise floors should be audible. I do recommend dithering for 16 bit as the very last thing before truncating.

[jonny deep]

I track at around -18 to -12 on the track meter in Reaper. When I've tried exporting to 16 bit wav, I've tried with and without dithering and noise shaping selected. At some point I'll go and try again in a more scientific manner with all combinations of these options.