dcollins wrote on Sat, 22 May 2004 07:51 |
Forget spending money on such luxurys as monitoring or acoustics, and start building your collection of different dithers and noise-shapers. Like the pro's do.
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Hee hee. Hey Dave - I think you broke my online sarcasm detector's meters by slammin them to 11 with that one!
It seems what dither does for you is often misunderstood from what I've seen from a lot of general blather on the net. This is all it will do for you: it smoothes out the sounds of things that fade out to the lowest dynamic levels - so that things like reverb tails instead of fizzling out as they get to the quiestest point blend into the noise floor instead. Good dither should have a few things: randomness, "pleasantness", and should be a tiny bit different on L & R channels (not in level - but in the noise being produced), and it's presence should be not apparent to the listener unless you really focus on it.
So whether the choice of it is critical is kind of dependent on the material and recording. i.e. A typical hip-hop master where the recording was made using 16bit samples & digital reverbs (which tend to fizzle out at the end of their tails anyway), and where the levels are usually pretty constantly slammed (where maybe the only time things fade to zero is at the end of the song) - what you use for dither - heck, whether you even bother to dither at all - really is not going to make any kind of appreciable difference (except for that final fade). Contrast this with a recording done of say a string quartet done at 24 bit done in a live reverberant room where the material has a serious amount of dynamics and quiet passages - and then dither choice can be much more important as there are all kinds of things whose sound is fading into the distance that you'll want to preserve the natural characteristics of the ambience (which gives a sense of being there in the room) as much as possible.
What the best thing to use is pretty subjective - and rather than trusting what the "experts" say it's best to judge for yourself.
There are examples of various dither's noise cranked up so you can hear what the differences are at:
http://www.24-96.net/dither/Another way to check this out is to take a 24bit recording of something like, say a single strum on an acoustic guitar that fades to the distance in a really live room. Process it to 16bit first truncating, and then using all your different dither options that you have. Listen back to the results and see what one you like the best.
Good headphones, good monitors, and a really quiet accurate room is pretty much a necessity for hearing the differences - because they are usually pretty subtle.
But ultimately what eq or comp you choose to set and what box is doing these things will have a much much greater impact on the vast majority of your masters than what dither you choose.
Best regards,
Steve Berson