Dithering in Adobe or Sonar

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by skiroy

Does it really matter?

No. At least not for typical pop music.

--Ethan

[Jay Dee]

I would keep the audio at 24 bit for export out of Sonar and import into Audition. If you do any internal bounces within Sonar, I would enable the triangular dither, since the audio engine operates at either 32 bit or 64 bit floating point. Of course, when you export your final file out of Audition at 16 bit you should dither with something appropriate like PowR or MBit, etc.

[skiroy]

Originally Posted by Jay Dee

I would keep the audio at 24 bit for export out of Sonar and import into Audition. If you do any internal bounces within Sonar, I would enable the triangular dither, since the audio engine operates at either 32 bit or 64 bit floating point. Of course, when you export your final file out of Audition at 16 bit you should dither with something appropriate like PowR or MBit, etc.

Okay cool but that brings up another question. The dithering that you speak about in sonar under the Audio settings under Advanced settings. Is this dithering setting only for playback and recording not exporting? Can this be set to none? Im asking because I never understand if I need to turn this setting to none or just the one that comes up for dithering when to export? Should the one that comes up when exporting be set to no dithering if your using a third party dithering plug in?

I ask because whats the point of having this nice waves dithering plugin if sonar is going to apply its dithering anyways?

[taturana]

Originally Posted by skiroy

Okay cool but that brings up another question. The dithering that you speak about in sonar under the Audio settings under Advanced settings. Is this dithering setting only for playback and recording not exporting? Can this be set to none? Im asking because I never understand if I need to turn this setting to none or just the one that comes up for dithering when to export? Should the one that comes up when exporting be set to no dithering if your using a third party dithering plug in?

I ask because whats the point of having this nice waves dithering plugin if sonar is going to apply its dithering anyways?

The dither in sonar is both for playing and exporting, i think recording has only a dc offset correcting option, no dither..... it can be set to none, rectangular, triangular, and pow-r (1,2 & 3) even if you do bounce in high bit rates (higher than 16 bit) its is correctly dithered to the bitrate you use... i set it to none while playing and to pow-r when exporting...

i normally export my mixes to a 32bit (or 24bit for larger files) 96khz file, with the Pow-r dither ... and then do my final dithering leveling and maximizing within sonar... BTW sonar 's pow-r dither does a great job... i use wavelab almost exclusively as a sound editor... before i used it for mastering, now i think sonar makes it easier...

IMHO the dithering in sonar is better than waves IDR.

[benjaminfrog]

My understanding is that you should only dither once - after you have completed all other signal processing - usually at the end of the mastering stage when you convert to 16/44.1.

[mamm7215]

Originally Posted by benjaminfrog

My understanding is that you should only dither once - after you have completed all other signal processing - usually at the end of the mastering stage when you convert to 16/44.1.

Yes, that's my understanding, too. And Sonar's dithering is very good.