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Post by littlesicily on Jul 5, 2014 16:38:20 GMT -6
Johnkenn and I were having a conversation about dithering and we thought it'd be good to continue the conversation here. Regarding when NOT to dither, I was saying that I record at 24bit / 44.1kHz in PT10 and bounce an undithered wave of my mix. I then take that 24bit wave to iTunes and convert it to an MP3 using a modified version of LAME encoder (the best sounding wave to mp3 convertor I've found). I then send that mp3 to the client. If you compare an mp3 made off the 24bit wave, it sounds a lot better than off a 16 bit wave. Since these mixes are not going to be burned to a CD, there's really no reason to lose those extra 8 bits. Right? Any other thoughts on this from the more technically minded than me?
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Post by watchtower on Jul 5, 2014 17:01:53 GMT -6
You only need to dither when you're reducing the bit depth. That said, dithering from 32-bit floating point to 24 bit is not necessary from what I understand.
If you import a 24-bit file, and do no processing to it, and export maybe just a certain time selection of that file as 24 bit, I would not dither. If you add FX, or even just adjust the volume fader, your DAW will add bits and process the audio at more than 24-bit. If you were exporting that, I would probably do so at 32-bit. Dither it if you're exporting to 16-bit.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 5, 2014 17:34:42 GMT -6
But no one besides Cubase has 32 bit, right?
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Post by littlesicily on Jul 5, 2014 18:03:00 GMT -6
But no one besides Cubase has 32 bit, right? PT10 let's u choose 16, 24 or 32 bit… but I always select 24.  |
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Post by jeromemason on Jul 5, 2014 18:06:41 GMT -6
Sal what dither settings are you using? I use type 2 Ultra.
I'm seriously thinking about investing in Steinberg Wavelab. It has some really great features from what I'm reading. I'm a student too so I can get it pretty cheap.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 5, 2014 18:07:48 GMT -6
Oh - wow. I don't know how that's escaped me.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 5, 2014 18:08:48 GMT -6
If you search the internet enough, you can get it reeeeaaalllly cheap.
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Post by watchtower on Jul 5, 2014 18:10:47 GMT -6
But no one besides Cubase has 32 bit, right? I'm pretty sure every DAW at this point is 32-bit floating point, if not higher. |
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Post by littlesicily on Jul 5, 2014 19:00:51 GMT -6
Sal what dither settings are you using? I use type 2 Ultra. I'm seriously thinking about investing in Steinberg Wavelab. It has some really great features from what I'm reading. I'm a student too so I can get it pretty cheap. I'm not dithering b/c I always record and bounce at 24bit. If it needs to be dithered down, my mastering guy does that and I don't know what he's using. What have u found to be the best for dithering? |
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Post by jeromemason on Jul 5, 2014 19:15:23 GMT -6
I just always use the dithering on an L1 set to Ultra and Type 2 when I'm going down to 44.1/16.
But like John was saying Izotope has some advanced algorithms and I might have to seriously look deeper into this dithering thing, from what I'm reading it's pretty important in today's world of listening devices.
I just need to go lock myself in the lab and get this figured out.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 5, 2014 19:26:14 GMT -6
Honestly, I have never been able to tell one iota of difference.
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Post by henge on Jul 6, 2014 6:46:38 GMT -6
But no one besides Cubase has 32 bit, right? I'm pretty sure every DAW at this point is 32-bit floating point, if not higher. Pretty much...Reaper's at 64bit internally. |
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Post by henge on Jul 6, 2014 6:47:46 GMT -6
Honestly, I have never been able to tell one iota of difference. LOL! Same here. I know a guy that claims he can hear different dithering algos at work... |
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Post by lolo on Jul 6, 2014 6:48:25 GMT -6
So if you are bouncing a track say to send to mastering engineer. Bounce 48/24. You dont need to dither?We had this dicussion on here not long ago, and i believe Bob and Popmann mentioned it is better to do it, even if you are not reducing bit depth
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Post by watchtower on Jul 6, 2014 8:01:29 GMT -6
Going from 32 to 24, dither is not going to do harm, but it's also unlikely to fix anything. Your recording certainly wont be ruined. I always learned to dither any time you reduce bit depth (requantization). But it also sort of makes sense to only requantize/dither once. After all the courses I've taken, I'd say I have an above average understanding of digital audio, but to quote someone who knows more than I do...
"It's not going to hurt to dither 32 bit down to 24, but it's unlikely to contribute anything either. Dither only does one thing-- prevent very low level distortion
components from appearing during requantization. from 32->24 bit, these are going to be down around -150dB or below... assuming they form at all, because any natural signal's noise will provide all the dithering noise you need. OTOH, it also adds noise-- again in any real signal, the added noise would be far below any noise that already exists in the signal."
Remember, even though we typically record at 24-bit, due to the natural noise of electronics, we aren't actually getting a full 24-bits of non-noise resolution
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Post by tonycamphd on Jul 6, 2014 8:23:33 GMT -6
Imv it's a great idea to just use 32 float on all sessions, it doesn't bogg ur computers performance, and gives u virtually foolproof headroom just in case, the more input u use the greater the bit depth dynamic range. Sir Bob Ohlsson and Popman both know a lot about this topic, where is that link?... Where is popman? littlesicily I believe u can bounce a 44.1/24bit stereo interleaved file, and it will play in I tunes now... I seem to remember doing this recently?? |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 6, 2014 9:30:51 GMT -6
I thought dither introduced low level distortion...
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Post by littlesicily on Jul 6, 2014 9:51:04 GMT -6
Imv it's a great idea to just use 32 float on all sessions, I've wanted to do this but my mix partner (we share the load) is still on pt9. |
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Post by littlesicily on Jul 6, 2014 9:52:08 GMT -6
littlesicily I believe u can bounce a 44.1/24bit stereo interleaved file, and it will play in I tunes now... I seem to remember doing this recently?? Yes Tony, iTunes can handle 24 bit waves. |
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Post by littlesicily on Jul 6, 2014 10:09:05 GMT -6
So if you are bouncing a track say to send to mastering engineer. Bounce 48/24. You dont need to dither?We had this dicussion on here not long ago, and i believe Bob and Popmann mentioned it is better to do it, even if you are not reducing bit depth Wish I knew their reason for this. |
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Post by watchtower on Jul 6, 2014 10:33:46 GMT -6
I thought dither introduced low level distortion... Dither is low level noise. Not low level distortion. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 6, 2014 12:08:28 GMT -6
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Jul 6, 2014 13:04:14 GMT -6
Dither prevents low level distortion. The only time to not dither is when copying audio unchanged.
A tenth of a dB. level change expands bit depth beyond what can be handed to the next process or written to a file. Hence it requires dither to prevent edgy "digital sounding" distortion. It can be hard to hear with a DAW until after you write the file because many plug-ins let the DAW write the truncation but the monitoring is still 24 bit. The other thing about the distortion is that it accumulates twice as fast with every generation than the noise from dithering does. If the audio has ever been truncated, the benefits of 24 bit dither become much harder to hear. This has led many people to think it isn't important. If not, the dimension and depth both go away when you turn off the dither. On top of that signal processing starts sounding edgy.
Properly engineered dither is less audible than the distortion caused by not dithering. Dither being an option is lazy programming. We ought to just be able to select an output format and never need to think about dither. It's just as stupid as having a separate record bias button would be on an analog tape machine. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jul 6, 2014 13:29:32 GMT -6
My head hurts
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Post by jeromemason on Jul 6, 2014 13:47:27 GMT -6
Dither prevents low level distortion. The only time to not dither is when copying audio unchanged.
A tenth of a dB. level change expands bit depth beyond what can be handed to the next process or written to a file. Hence it requires dither to prevent edgy "digital sounding" distortion. It can be hard to hear with a DAW until after you write the file because many plug-ins let the DAW write the truncation but the monitoring is still 24 bit. The other thing about the distortion is that it accumulates twice as fast with every generation than the noise from dithering does. If the audio has ever been truncated, the benefits of 24 bit dither become much harder to hear. This has led many people to think it isn't important. If not, the dimension and depth both go away when you turn off the dither. On top of that signal processing starts sounding edgy.
Properly engineered dither is less audible than the distortion caused by not dithering. Dither being an option is lazy programming. We ought to just be able to select an output format and never need to think about dither. It's just as stupid as having a separate record bias button would be on an analog tape machine. Bob, in a sense, is this similar to what bit crunching is and why people do it? It seems logical that while being in a 24 bit session with a pretty hot mix, that by reducing the bit rate would cause some type of distortion. By dithering and replacing that empty space with inaudible audio (weird) it would prevent the crunching so to speak. Would this be accurate or am I totally off on my thinking? |
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