To dither or not to dither - reducing bit depth- maybe?

A

alphadelta80

New member
I'm working on an album that has 20 songs. It's 756 MB of data. They will fit on CDs, but the last 3 songs are skipping. Is there a way to reduce the size of the date without having destroying the sound quality? We're trying to get it under 700 MB without cutting the songs short.

The artist mixed them down at 24 bit, then when he mastered them, he saved them at 16 bit/ 44.1khz.

After we noticed the files are too big, he went back and mixed them down again at 16 bit and then mastered them again at 16 bit/ 44.1 khz. We thought this would decrease the size of the file. We were obviously as wrong as two left shows.

Any suggestions?
 
CD quality audio has a fixed ratio between time a data. You can't get more time in the same amount of data so there's no way to get the whole thing on one CD if the audio runs too long.

Dithering is a process you apply to audio just before reducing the word length ("bit depth"), for example from 24 bit to 16 bit. Dithering doesn't do anything to reduce data rates.
 
On top of everything else -- Although newer CD-R's will technically allow for 700MB (around 79.5 minutes) and some will allow overburning (as you've found out), to actually keep a disc "in spec" you don't want more than 74.5 minutes (around 650MB of data) on the disc.

ALL audio CD's are 16-bit @ 44.1kHz. The original data can be anything -- Once it's an audio disc, it has to be 16/44.1 - No exceptions.
 
20 songs is a lot - are they all worth keeping? Removing the weakest could be an opportunity to make the whole product stronger.

Or, is splitting it across two disks an option?
 
"Dithering is a process you apply to audio just before reducing the word length ("bit depth"), for example from 24 bit to 16 bit. Dithering doesn't do anything to reduce data rates."

My music is pretty shallow? So I don't really need to dither. And I record and mix down at 24 bits. I know people do 16 for distrobution, CDs and whatnot. I agree with the poster above, just cut it back, 20 seems too many to me.
 
Now there'll be a whol elot of dithering about cutting tracks.
It's not always handy when a word is appropraited for technological tasks that don't necessarily match the meaning of recent consensus.
Imagine labelling someone who's task it is to mathematically & therefore logically reduce a number to a usable length. We should call the person who invented a third a ditherererererererererer!
 
...or you could just time stretch (or shrink rather) everything and then learn to play your songs faster live. hahahah
 
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