to dither or not to dither

[wandering dog]

a question for those of you who master your cakewalk projects with plugins or other software: is it best to turn off the dither in cakewalk so as to only dither once at the final step?

 

[Teacher]

thats what most of the "pros" say

 

[Track Rat]

That's what I do. I record at 24 bits and only dither at the very last step once I've done all I'm going to do to the two track mix. I dither to 16 bits and make a CD.

 

[atomictoyz]

Dithering should always be the last thing your doing before going to Cd-R, in the context of DIY "Mastering at Home".

If you are going to a Mastering House, please do not dither, or compress, normalize or any dynamic processing on the 2 track premaster being sent to the Mastering Engineer. Its like handcuffs on pick pocket walking in the mall.

Peace,
Dennis