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masteringhouse · 13th May 2008, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jax

While I was bouncing ref mixes, the clients I'm working with pointed out that a section of a song with harsh, hi-pitched guitar amp feedback sounded overly shrill, and it hadn't when they were listening to the 24 bit session. I know, it's kind of a contradiction - "how nice do you want your harsh feedback to sound?" - but if it bothers a client, it must be fixed. After being drawn in by this anomaly for a closer listen to the whole song, the song sounded "veiled" to them when dithering was applied, but great when it wasn't. I'm used to my mixes becoming slightly veiled when dithering, but I had never heard a client say it before until last night. I would think the veiling effect would reduce shrillness of the one section, but I guess it didn't.

I answered their questions about what was going on by giving them a basic understanding of dithering. When they understood these two things: if dither wasn't applied and the mix was left at 24 bit, it wouldn't playback on their home systems or in their cars - hence my reason for using it; and when the 24 bit mix landed in the hands of a mastering engineer, better dithering tools would be used and its audible effects would be negligible, they were satisfied... after all, the bounces were only refs.

There's only one thing I can think of that might explain why the shrill section stood out. A dual mono compressor plug-in on the master fader (Pro Tools) was followed by multi-channel dither, rather than multi-mono. Would matching the dual mono compression with multi-mono dither have somehow kept the one section from sounding shrill? I didn't think of this last night. We were all very tired and it was the end of the session. I'm sure I was on autopilot. When I go back, I'll check for myself, but I'd like to get some feedback from my favorite ME's here at Gearslutz. What might be the deal?

I would tend to doubt that it had anything to do with using a multi-mono plug but more possibly the type of noise shaping used for the dither. What type of dither did you use?