Dither - My Ears can't hear it

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mshilarious said:
Yeah, I've got WL's internal dither, which has a bunch of options. Never had to try it before though :confused: And I still don't understand the Apogee behavior. It was really strange, never seen that on any other track :confused:
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I'm just curious if it's a software bug, or something inherent in the source audio. Try WL dither and let us know if the same thing happens ...
 
masteringhouse said:
I wonder if anyone can listen to a track and identify if bass traps are or are not being used in a room?
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I often can! Seriously. A mix done in a poor room sounds much like listening in a poor room. You can hear some bass notes pop out, and others disappear, as the mix engineer applied EQ inappropriately not understanding that he was EQ'ing his room rather than the track.

I don't know how far away you are in PA, but if you'd ever like to visit me here in western Connecticut I'll be glad to test your dither awareness. $100 says you won't be able to tell which dither flavor is which if I play the tracks and you can't see which one is playing. :D

--Ethan
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Either way, truncation artifacting does appear as extra information encoded within the signal and the noise
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I understand what you're saying, but I still have $100 that says you can't pick out dithered versus truncated in a blind test. It's just too soft, and too well masked by the music.

--Ethan
 
Ethan Winer said:
I often can! Seriously. A mix done in a poor room sounds much like listening in a poor room. You can hear some bass notes pop out, and others disappear, as the mix engineer applied EQ inappropriately not understanding that he was EQ'ing his room rather than the track.
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What if the room never needed bass traps to begin with? I think we all tune our ears into different part of audio. Personally I'm very "frequency balance centric". It drives me crazy when parts of the spectrum jump out inappropriately, or the overall balance is skewed. Some of my clients are very sensitive to noise versus balance, one has actually heard a wiring issue that I had long ago down to around -96 dBFS!

Ethan Winer said:
I don't know how far away you are in PA, but if you'd ever like to visit me here in western Connecticut I'll be glad to test your dither awareness. $100 says you won't be able to tell which dither flavor is which if I play the tracks and you can't see which one is playing. :D

--Ethan
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Never mind the $100, you bring the beer! :p

Actually as I mentioned that I haven't developed the ability to name the flavors of dither by listening, only that I can hear a difference between them. We all have better things to tune our ears to than that.

It would be cool to meet anyway ...

Best,
Tom
 
mshilarious said:
I can't agree that the effects cannot be measured and shown to be potentially audible.
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The affect of dither can absolutely be measured. And it can heard if you turn up the volume unnaturally during a quiet passage. But at normal listening levels nobody can hear it. They only think they can.

it's common for listeners to select material that is technically inferior.
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It's also common for listeners to "prefer" one over the other even when the same source is played both times. Think about that!

as a recordist, I can't presume that the listener will calibrate their monitors appropriately and never crank it.
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Sure, but by the time the volume is high enough to hear the effect of dither, it will be WAY too loud for the rest of the track.

here is a simple test file:
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All I see is a 1 KB file that won't play in Windows Media Player or even load into Sound Forge. :confused:

what is the cost to eliminate quantization distortion?
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This is a great point, and I have a good answer: The "cost" is that too many people accept as true everything they're told, even when their own ears say otherwise. Every day I see someone ask in a forum which [whatever] they should buy, with a pathetic apology that their ears probably aren't sharp enough to tell, hence their post to ask the "experts" in the forum. Hogwash. Anyone with enough interest in music and recording to read a forum like this has ears good enough to tell good sound from bad sound.

--Ethan
 
masteringhouse said:
What if the room never needed bass traps to begin with?
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I never met a room that doesn't need bass traps. Even million dollar control rooms have bass traps. It's impossible to make any domestic size room perfectly flat without traps, or even get within a 10 dB span. So the more bass traps you add, the closer to flat you get.

I haven't developed the ability to name the flavors of dither by listening, only that I can hear a difference between them.
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That's fine. My $100 is on the table for that test too. :D

It would be cool to meet anyway
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How far into PA are you? I'm barely more than an hour from the eastern PA border.

--Ethan
 
Ethan Winer said:
All I see is a 1 KB file that won't play in Windows Media Player or even load into Sound Forge. :confused:
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:confused: It downloads fine for me, it's a 16 bit mono .wav file, only 5 seconds . . . doesn't open in WMP but that's not a huge surprise. I can open it in Wavelab without trouble.
 
On a slight tangent:

How do I find out how many traps I need for my room size? I don't mind making 20 of 'em if I have to, I just don't know how many would be overkill, and I also want broadband absorbers and such for higher frequencies as well...maybe I'm not looking right.

room dim:

~12' wide
~21' long
~7' 4" tall (i know, it's a shortie)

Am I over-thinking this ethan? I just want a good(better)-sounding room....lol
 
how long does it take to apply dither...jesus christ people! Just throw it on, even if you can't hear it..who cares...it takes like 2 seconds...so even if it's theoretically better, why is it a big deal to waste those 2 seconds to dither an entire track.. a lot of software even has a setting to automatically do it when downsampling, so it's not even like you have to click an extra button aside from the checkbox saying apply dither.. You probably get pissed when warming dinner up in a microwave too because it takes way to long, and it just might not give you any more taste or nutritional value to zap it... ack! haha
 
Ethan Winer said:
I understand what you're saying, but I still have $100 that says you can't pick out dithered versus truncated in a blind test. It's just too soft, and too well masked by the music.
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We're going around in circles now, Ethan. I already said twice that I wouldn't take that bet any more than you would take the bet over which track was EQd and which one wasn't, and that that is a red herring of a test that is asking for the wrong answer.

I'm all for Internet myth bashing; I'm sure we'll be allies in this in other upcoming topics. but I'm afriad you're trying to through the baby out with the bath water on dither, Eth. This one is real.

Stick to trapping bass, Tom'll stick to mastering mixes, and I'll stick to bopping Dana Delaney, and everything will remain in balance :D.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
We're going around in circles now, Ethan. I already said twice that I wouldn't take that bet any more than you would take the bet over which track was EQd and which one wasn't, and that that is a red herring of a test that is asking for the wrong answer.

I'm all for Internet myth bashing; I'm sure we'll be allies in this in other upcoming topics. but I'm afriad you're trying to through the baby out with the bath water on dither, Eth. This one is real.

Stick to trapping bass, Tom'll stick to mastering mixes, and I'll stick to bopping Dana Delaney, and everything will remain in balance :D.

G.
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Gotta agree. If we were talking about dither with a 24 bit or 32 float depth Ethan would have a good point since many converters aren't able to produce a noise floor that low, though cumulative processing at 24 or 32 is another issue.

Let's save the good fight for other issues, like G. bopping Dana Delany. :)
 
jrhager84 said:
How do I find out how many traps I need for my room size? I don't mind making 20 of 'em ... room dim:
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My living room is only a little larger than that at 25 by 16 feet, and I have 44 bass traps and four diffusors. :D

It's impossible to make any small room perfectly flat and with no ringing. So the more bass traps you have, the closer you'll get to flat.

Okay, gotta go now, Dana Delaney is at the door.

--Ethan
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I'm all for Internet myth bashing
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But what if I'm right on this myth too? :D

I understand it's not big deal to apply dither, and that it doesn't "cost" much in terms of CPU and disk space like recording at 24/96. But to me that's not the point. It's a pointless and silly fetish.

--Ethan
 
you don't need dana delaney, no one does. just close your eyes, if you can't tell a difference its all bullshit....its a waste of time....might as well be Rosie Palm.
 
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