dither

[mbc113]

so, i've known what dither is for years and why we have to use it, etc., but i embarassingly have never known at what points in the signal chain its needed. actually, to be honest i've never really thought about it too much; i always just think that my DAW will take care of this for me. anyway... is it just at the very end during mixdown that it needs to engaged? should it just be added in mastering? before any processing? it seems that you wouldn't want to be adding noise all the time, since it seems like it would built up, right? what's the story?

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by mbc113

so, i've known what dither is for years and why we have to use it

Then why are you asking this question? Only apply dither if you are messing with sample rates, otherwise leave it alone.

[dagosto]

Dither should be apllied at any and every stage of the mix when work at or below 16-bits. It should be applied on the way into your DAW, at every gain and summing stage, and on mix down. When woking at or abo24 bits the level of the dither would be at the same level as thermal noise from from atoms, so dither is not needed. Then when you mix down to 16-bit dither must be turned on.

[Nubus]

it directly affects quantization error right? is it more effective on sample rate or bit depth?

[dagosto]

Actually it has little or nothing to do with sample rate.

[Nubus]

so dither has nothing to do with the quantization which occurs between say a conversion from 48 k to 44.1? i thought it would.

[Nubus]

damn this thread made me learn stuff. so I've never once applied dither to anything i've ever done. I always work at 24 bit in the daw, and bounce it at 24 bit. I let Jam do the conversion for me... do you know if Jam applies dither for me? I always work at 44.1... though I know now that this has little to nothing to do with my question.

[dagosto]

I've never used Jam but odds are it probably does. I would attempt to see if I could tell the difference between dithering in Jam opposed to dithering in your DAW. You may be suprised. I would guess that both the dither and the sample rate conversion is higher quality in your DAW.

[Nubus]

it does, but i don't care about it enough to listen for the difference. I just realized this last night, video uses dither as well?

[dagosto]

Everything that is digitized needs dither up to a certain point. Even stills.

There is this little analogy that I read somewhere (I can't remember exactly) that kinda makes sense out of why we dither digital data. It goes as follows:

Hold your hand up to the computer screen and spread out your fingers so that you are looking through them at the screen. You fingers are now covering up parts of the screen so you are not getting an accurate pictur of what is in front of you. Now apply dither to your hand by shaking it back and fourth. You should now be able to see everything on the screen even though your fingers are covering up parts.

Does this make any sense?