In a dither...

[Armistice]

So somewhere in there I've managed to record a couple of tunes for my album in glorious 16 bit instead of 24.

I have to line all these up in the "mastering" process and dither them during the conversion to 16 bit, I believe... obviously a pointless exercise for songs that are already there..

Should I, when rendering the final WAV files in preparation for getting the master track done

(a) Save the 16 bit files as 24 bit (which I assume doesn't actually do anything) and then dither everything to 16 bit
(b) Just note which are already 16 bit, use the 16 bit WAVs and turn the dithering plug in off for those sections of the master track
(c) Something else (which might be...?)


And while I'm talking dithering... is there any particular reason to use any particular plug in (I assume there's one in the Reaper toolkit somewhere) for this process? I've read articles about how plug a is better than plug b but doubt I have the ears to tell the difference.

Thanks in advance..

 

[Chili]

(b) Just note which are already 16 bit, use the 16 bit WAVs and turn the dithering plug in off for those sections of the master track

 

[snow lizard]

Two sides to the coin.

In part, dither is an established tool with solid science to back it up used to manipulate the mechanical shortcomings of digital audio. In another sense it's a subjective discussion about hearing.

I can't see any harm coming from throwing a dither plug on the 2 buss, even if all your files are 24 bit. If you can't hear a difference it probably isn't hurting anything. If you can, it will probably come in the form of a subtle improvement in detail perception of lower level audio and 3D imaging.

TPDF, IIRC is the one that people seem to prefer.


YMMV, NTTAWWT, IMNSFHO, etc.

 

[Armistice]

(b) Just note which are already 16 bit, use the 16 bit WAVs and turn the dithering plug in off for those sections of the master track

Thanks Chili... thought that was probably the way to go! Very close now... (yeah, yeah...)

 

[Armistice]

Two sides to the coin.

In part, dither is an established tool with solid science to back it up used to manipulate the mechanical shortcomings of digital audio. In another sense it's a subjective discussion about hearing.

I can't see any harm coming from throwing a dither plug on the 2 buss, even if all your files are 24 bit. If you can't hear a difference it probably isn't hurting anything. If you can, it will probably come in the form of a subtle improvement in detail perception of lower level audio and 3D imaging.

TPDF, IIRC is the one that people seem to prefer.


YMMV, NTTAWWT, IMNSFHO, etc.

Nice info... now I just have to work out what the disclaimers all mean... (got the first one..)