Let's say you're using a dither method that pushes the noise/errors up to 17khz, yet you've already cut out everything below 17 khz with an eq before it gets to dithering - does that matter? This episode has turned out to be far more interesting than I anticipated, by the way. Really enjoying it haha :)

@octafuzzaudioworks: No, sample rate has nothing to do with quantisation. Dither is needed when you save to a fixed bit-depth, e.g. 16 or 24-bit. You don't need it if you're staying in your DAW, *until* you save out as a final file. Then you need it.

What type of dithering would you recommend for a track that is using tape saturation. For example, I've mixed my song and I decided to add an Ampex tape plugin on the output adding a bit of noise to smooth the track out. Thanks! I really enjoyed the show.

An hour saved: In theory dither is benificial even though in reality you probably wont hear any difference.......

tbh even if you'd were to use the picture analogy, the number of pixels should be the sample rate and the color bit depth should be the bit depth of the audio signal

i think i'm gonna master an EP to 8bit..juts for the heck of it

some old samplers/romplers used this technique.  in addition to compand/expand  and pre and post EQ.

So should we be dithering our 24 bit pre-masters to send the mastering engineer? They came from 32- or 64-bit floating point calculations within the DAW so truncation is taking place! Dither to 24-bit or not?

Yes - it’s The Dither Episode ! But hang in there, it’s not as bad as you might think. My guest host this week is Jon Tidey from reaperblog.net, who *hates* talking about dither, so I had to work hard to keep it interesting. And I think I succeeded, mostly! We cover loads of topics, like why the analogy of hi-res digital audio with digital photos is wrong (or at least deeply misleading) and why dither means digital ‘resolution’ is NOT a real thing. Plus:

- Why dither helps prevent your audio from 'sounding digital’
- How the right kind of dither can make even 8-bit audio sound OK 
- Why it works - and what that has to do with my lava lamp
- Whether we can *really* hear the difference
- How to test yourself using “Gangnam Style"
- Why you should stop worrying and just dither !

Visit the website for links
http://themasteringshow.com/the-mastering-show-21-why-digital-resolution-doesnt-exist-because-dither/

The Mastering Show #21 - Why digital “resolution” doesn’t exist - because dither

This is the show where we cover all aspects of mastering. If you're interested in mastering, want to learn how to get better results mastering your own music, or even want to be a mastering engineer, this is the show you want to hear.

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