| Does dither matter? Absolutely. It is unassailable and provable scientific fact. You can measure it, the differences lie well within human auditory perception, and listening tests support it.
OK, that said, is it the most important thing facing us. By far, no.
Is it important in all situations? Again, no. Obvious all the time? For a third time, no.
If you are dithering from 48 to 24, you can still measure it, but you can't hear it. But why would you not do it? There's no downside, only upside. And who knows what will happen after repeated truncation, or with many tracks added together. It's just not worth omitting the dither.
Also, a lot of modern program material is so loud and so distorted that the relatively minor truncation distortion you add from not dithering is a tear in the ocean and likely will never be heard. The low level detail is where it really counts. Fades, reverb tails, the sound of a hall in an acoustic recording - these are places where it's most important, and especially taking these things to 16 bit.
Still, some perceive a slight brightening of the program due to truncation distortion, and occasionally some even prefer the extra distortion, though if I add distortion, I'd rather do it in a controlled manner somewhere earlier in tha chain. Then again, some perceive a brightening when they use some noise shaped dither as opposed to flat TPDF.
In the end, if you choose not to use it, that's your business. I choose to break the rules all the time if it suits the music (tubes, transformers, all kinds of fun distortion, and other creative techniques); but the key is to make an informed decision, understand what you are gaining and what you are losing, and not simply make an excuse for bad engineering practice. |