Dithering

[Teacher]

i use the POW-R dithering in samplitude..since i've been using samplitude my mixes do sound better...but i don't think thats the reason..

[Alécio Costa]

It is funny. I have just written two threads at PSW ( NIka´s room) and at RO ( PLugin home) concerning plugins and dithers. A guy said I was doing damage to my job using Power dither from Digi, which is not my opinion.

So I wrote a thread at Guru Nika´s place so as to have deeper info about it. I always thought Power was quite good. So what are your opinions? I prefer digirack dither than that of MAster X and WAves.

[iomegaman]

Well you've got to identify your apples and your oranges here...
dithering in it's simplest definition is adding noise to your signal to smooth out truncation errors caused by changing bit rates. In a more complex discussion there are several different algorithems that will allow you to do this and avoid huge artifacts, this is where you need to decide which apple is related to what orange. I don' think you can make generalised statements comparing dithering processes without first identifying which algorithem you are talking about...you know apples to apples...

All dithering adds noise, I believe apogee is using UV22 which refers to the fact that almost all the noise added in their dither happens at 22khz (just out of earshot), this would explain a perceived difference in other dithers, but personally I would only use that dither after all other processing was done. There are differences in the way the dither algorithems sound compared to one another, but some of it is subjective.

[Alécio Costa]

I agree with you iomega.