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foobar output dither on or off ?

post #1 of 4
7/16/11 at 6:15pm
Thread Starter 

hey i use dacmagic 16bit was wondering if i should have dither on or off ? what does it do exactly ?

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post #2 of 4
8/1/11 at 9:18pm
Thread Starter 

bump

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post #3 of 4
8/1/11 at 10:04pm
Dither off, unless you have 24 bit files.
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post #4 of 4
8/2/11 at 1:00am

This is what is called quantization error.

If you apply any kind of DSP e.g. volume control you do a calculation on a sample.

Lets play at half volume.

10/2=5

9/2=4.5

But our DACs accept integers (16 or 24 bit) only so in the end all must be converted to integer.

So 10/2=5

9/2=5

As digital audio is about digits so a binary system, this will happen all of time the except if you use a power of 2.

This quantization error is correlated with the audio signal.

 

Dither is a trick to remove this correlation by storing noise in the LSB (the lowest bit).

Practical: as it is the LSB in case of 16 bits audio the level is at -96 dBFS.

This is soft but audible so use dither in case of 16 bits.

In case of 24 bits it is at -144 dBFS, well below the noise floor of your gear.

Here it probably won't make a difference if you use it or not.

 

A more detailed explanation: http://www.users.qwest.net/~volt42/cadenzarecording/DitherExplained.pdf

 

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