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Dithering


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I do because you're supposed to, but honestly I can't tell the difference.

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I think the idea is that a digital waveform will never be perfect, so dithering would improve it mathematically even if you don't hear it through your system. It just smooths out any quantization error.

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Dithering in unobtrusive, low on CPU, and mandatory. As strange and exaggerated as it may seem, it can make an audible difference even when going from 32/64 to 24bit. Truncation is an unpredictable bitch.

The various Airwindows options are great, especially all the variations around the NotJustAnotherDither algo. AW Monitoring lives on my 2buss while producing / mixing, and of course at export. Beware that your DAC isn't supposed to dither what it outputs either, so it definitely makes sense to monitor through it.

Ps: I've also heard some significant difference with low quality streaming à la Soundcloud.

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20 minutes ago, Nil said:

Dithering in unobtrusive, low on CPU, and mandatory. As strange and exaggerated as it may seem, it can make an audible difference even when going from 32/64 to 24bit. Truncation is an unpredictable bitch.

The various Airwindows options are great, especially all the variations around the NotJustAnotherDither algo. AW Monitoring lives on my 2buss while producing / mixing, and of course at export. Beware that your DAC isn't supposed to dither what it outputs either, so it definitely makes sense to monitor through it.

Ps: I've also heard some significant difference with low quality streaming à la Soundcloud.

Thanks for this response, although I think a lot of low quality sounding Soundcloud uploads come from unexpected level peaks caused by rounding errors that occur during the file compression to a lossy format which can be fixed by using a ceiling level of below 0db, some say -0.3db is enough, some say -1db is enough, depends on the kind of limiter you use I guess (true peak/non-true-peak). But if you're telling me that the absence of dithering or wrong dithering is a factor that contributes to that problem I'm gonna believe you

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Absolutely. It's a deteriorating factor, adding of course to the super lo-fi, brutal Soundcloud conversion.

On a related note, I for one can't wait for Soundcloud to adopt some sort of loudness normalisation. I do more and more mastering, and most of the time Spotify is the target for the client : dynamic masters sound so much better, every time, and streaming makes no exception there.

I'm getting used to offer 2 versions because of SC : a balanced, dynamic one with a healthy crest factor that sounds absolutely great on its own on all streaming platforms, on wav as well of course, whenever played live on a nice PA etc... and a stupidly limited one for SC so that it can "rival" with all the absurdly loud, crushed tracks up there.

Ps: have you noticed the newly added HD icon whenever uploading a lossless track to SC though ? The streaming fidelity seems a bit better now with such tracks.

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