And one step futher, but much more contemporary, is the Grace ANSR.
Were you running it, or no?
Do you want to further change that?
Interesting thought. I ran ANSR, quite a bit. I generally didn't edit those recordings in post, but I did on a few occasions. For some reason I thought ANSR is different from traditional dither, though I couldn't tell you why. .
I haven't used that on my V3, but I suppose it's a 'noise shaped' or 'colored' dither like UV22 and others that attempt to put more of the dither noise in regions that are less audible because of the non-linear low level sensitivity of the ear (out of the midrange).
...
If the answer to going back into the analog realm is to leverage the sonic characteristics of the intermediate analog gear, that's one thing. But if it's to avoid double-dither, or some other issue, I'm still not grasping why it's better.
I don't think it's the double-dither, double-dipper. There's actually more dithering going on with the analog route since there is another A>D step in there.
I can imagine that increasing the sample rate of an existing digital file by doing a D>A>D conversion with quality gear may sound better than using a digital sample rate conversion algorithm because of rounding errors in the complex math involved when doing it digitally. I'd think increasing the bit depth digitally to edit the file with more precision would not be a problem though since you're just increasing the word length with zeros.. no complex math.
If so that would mean a 16/44.1 > 24/44.1 (or 32/44.1 or 64/44.1) digital conversion is just as good as going the analog route (excluding any nice 'coloration' the analog stuff my add of course) as long as you don't change the sample rate.
^^
That applies to adding zeros to the bit depth only, not converting sample frequency up or down converting bit depth or sample rate. It also doesn't address any processing done later in the rarified air of the mastering suite, as easyjim noted.
Does that jibe with your observations, dmccabe?