24bit and 16bit files, 16bit dac, what foobar setting should i use?

You may notice a little improvement in fidelity with the dither when outputting in 16-bit and playing 44.1kHz/16bit files.

Dithering will probably not make a difference with your 24-bit files, but it will not do any harm either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mad Max 

You may notice a little improvement in fidelity with the dither when outputting in 16-bit and playing 44.1kHz/16bit files.

Dithering will probably not make a difference with your 24-bit files, but it will not do any harm either.

Are you sure this isn't the other way around?

Quote:

Originally Posted by firecommon 

So my music library is composed of mostly 16 bit 44.1 khz flac files, but maybe 1/10 of my library is composed of 24 bit files...

 

I have a 16 bit dac, using the tda1543 chip

 

I was wondering what my output preferences in foobar should be.

 

Should it be:

 

16 bit with no dither

or

16 bit with dither

 

I am under the impression that 16 bit with dither would be better for playing my 24 bit files, but what about playing my 16 bit files? Will dither affect the quality of music, or will (ideally) foobar automatically bypass dither because the bit rates are already the same?

 

Thanks for your help..

You will need dither to get the best out of 24 bit recordings on a 16 bit DAC. On older digital recordings done at 16 bit resolution you may or may not need dither, it depends on the type & qualty of the DAC in question Many newer digital recording are already recorded with dither, usually high resultion dither that puts most of the noise energy at the top of the audio band & as such can resolve sound as low as -110db with low distortion. This degree of resolution can only be achieved if the original ADC was full 24 bit resolution. These newer recordings will not benefit from added dither as it will just add extra noise. Most contemorary music does not benefit much from dither either as dynamic range is severely compressed. You may benefit from dither on these if using an older ladder type DAC as many of these had poor linearity & dither really helped these DACs.
 

 It appears that this DAC of yours may benefit from dither in all but the newer recordings (less than 10 years old) as it seems to be an older ladder type DAC. OOPS I'm mistaken it is a cheap hybrid DAC which will likely not benefit from dither except with 24 bit recordings. Sorry for the mistake there. The data sheet for this DAC can be somwhat misleading but there were 2 clues to its real archtecture in the data sheet. The seperation of the upper 5 bits from the lower 11 bits & the high clock speed of the DAC which I really had to hunt to find.

Most 1 bit DACs or hybrid DACs do not benefit from added dither on all but the true 24 bit recordings as they already have excellen linearity.

Note that adding dither to a 16 bit recording does nothing to improve the recording itself but can help reduce nonlinear distortion in the DAC itself. The quantization error will still be there as will be the fact that the old 16 bit ADCs went deaf below -90db. Even modern ADCs if set to 16 bit exibit this behavior though modern ADCs have vastly superior linearity in any bit depth you choose

Not in my experience.  Or you may hear some improvement with the 24-bit files as well for all I know.  There's no harm in just leaving the dither on and always using 16-bit output.

I hardly have any 24-bit albums as well.  I always leave foobar with 16-bit plus dithering.  The dithering results in a mild overall improvement for some albums.

I also have this same question but my DAC supports both 16 and 24bit

According to the link, 16bit files should benefit from dither but 24bit will not

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThumperSD 

I also have this same question but my DAC supports both 16 and 24bit

 

According to the link, 16bit files should benefit from dither but 24bit will not

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/

with a 24 bit DAC 24 bit bit playback will not benefit in fact in most cases you will not even be able to select dither if you have 24 playback selected as the thermal noise of the analog front end of the ADC is enough to dither a 24 bit system so in essense all 24 bit recordings are already dithered properly with thermal noise. you do need dither however if you only are playing bac k at 16 bit resolution in order to retain most of the dynamic range of the 24 bit system. using dither on a 24 bit playback system with 24 bit recordings is extremely counter productive in terms of overall performance of the sound system. However dither is neccessary to get the best out of a 24 bit recording played back on a 16 bit system. 

Dither can help on 16 bit recordings if played back on older low grade ladder type DACs but not on newer 1 bit or hybrid DACs. Most of these newer DACs are capable of proccessing 24 bit recordings anyway.