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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: Evil Taper on October 08, 2005, 02:49:19 AM
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There's all kinds of talk about dithering from 24bit down to 16bit in the air now. I guess I'm not understanding the reason to dither when there's easier methods. If you have a program like Soundforge 5 you can just resample the 24bit to 16bit without a reshaping of the sound or anything. The output files look and sound identical as far as I can tell. So, what's the advantage of "reshaping" the sound of your recording when down sampling it?
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you can not/do not resample from 24b to 16b. that would be dither. you resample from 96 to 44.1. big difference.
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So using the 24>16bit function on soundforge is actually doing a dither? In wavelab there are alot of different options for dithering and all kinds of options for reshaping and what not....when would you actually want to do that?
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you can not/do not resample from 24b to 16b. that would be dither. you resample from 96 to 44.1. big difference.
Gordon's right.
Dithering is when you change the Bit Rate (ie 24>16).
Re-sampling is when you cahnge the Sampling Rate (ie 96>44.1 or 48>44.1, etc.)
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So using the 24>16bit function on soundforge is actually doing a dither? In wavelab there are alot of different options for dithering and all kinds of options for reshaping and what not....when would you actually want to do that?
You'd want to dither down to 16 bits if you want to put the show on a regular audio cd that will play in any cd player. I do have wavelab but mostly use soundforge so not sure what different options you are specifically talking about?
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My bad. So why would you want to use a dither that changes the sound of the recording?
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My bad. So why would you want to use a dither that changes the sound of the recording?
if it's 24 bit show and I want to burn a regular cd then I dither.
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Exactly, but why use one that "reshapes" the sound or colors it at all?
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My bad. So why would you want to use a dither that changes the sound of the recording?
Because a 24 bit recording WILL NOT play on a regular cd player, that's why.
To listen to a 24 bit recording you can do it on your computer only if you have a compatible 24 bit soundcard which most people do not have. If you happen to have a DVD player that will play the DVD-A format (an audio DVD) which most don't you can burn a DVD at 24 bits to listen to. But you also need some VERY EXPENSIVE software to be able to burn 24 bit DVD-A discs.
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Exactly, but why use one that "reshapes" the sound or colors it at all?
As far as I know you can't just change the bit rate without changing the sound at all, that's why you'd dither. You have no choice in the matter if your final destination is 16 bit cd's.
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I burn dvd's of the 24 bit shows I get. but if I want to listen in the car I dither and burn a 16 bit. tons of seeds are started as 24 but then dithered and seeded to the mass's. it doesn't sound worse. just not as good ;)
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can you compress 24bit files or not? I noticed that FLAC is only compatable with 16-bit sources.
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can you compress 24bit files or not? I noticed that FLAC is only compatable with 16-bit sources.
Not sure which version it started with but you can totally FLAC 24/96 files. I have 3 King Crimson shows on my Hard-drive right now like that.
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i may be due for an update here then
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can you compress 24bit files or not? I noticed that FLAC is only compatable with 16-bit sources.
no it's not. flac can do 24 bit. shn can not do 24
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maybe it only does 24/96 files. my r1 records at 24/44.1
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it does 24/48 for sure. and I assume (don't feel like looking it up, it's late) it does 24/44. personaly I see no reason to record at 24/44.
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Is there a firmware update for the r1?
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http://edirol.com/products/info/r1.html
Actually, the highest quality format is 24/44.1 in the R1 and the latest firmware is the one it ships with v1.0.3.
http://edirol.com/support/drivers.html#updates
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tis what i thought. So, to burn an audio dvd i will now need to upsample to 96hrz, retrack and then burn that. the one i did with the program doing the 44>96 conversion has track transition blips.
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Bitdepth conversion is either a truncation (as in cut off) of the less significant bits (the ones that are quietest and usually always on) or a mathematical process used to interpolate and convert (digitally "compress") the waveform called dithering.
Noise can be added to make it sound better to the human ear.
The answer to your question is:
Truncated sources can sound harsh during quiet passages.
Some more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
http://www.24bitfaq.org/ (an oldie, but a goodiie, thanks Heend, Kelleher, and Nutter )
The more that you understand about this, the better your post-recording will be.
Dither to depths of 1 bit or less (0.2 to 0.7 bits), using the lower numbers when you are also applying noise-shaping.
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The question to which you keep coming back:
My bad. So why would you want to use a dither that changes the sound of the recording?
The short answer...
Two factors in play with respect to changing the sound of the recording:
[1] Dither
Dither is a destructive process, so it *must* change the sound of the recording. ALL dither changes the sound of the recording. We don't have a choice. But there isn't a single, "right" way to dither. Different dither schemes perform the process with different algorithm's - and that's why they sound different. Just like different mics / pre / ADC have different sonic characteristics due to choices the designers made when they created them.
[2] Noise Shaping
Noise shaping also changes the sound of the recording. Although ALL dither introduces noise as part of its destructive process, we can "tweak" the noise produced. Noise shaping is an attempt to shift the noise that dither creates into specific frequency ranges to which humans are less sensitive (typically higher frequencies, 15kHz - 22 kHz).
All your answers, ET, are...in the Archive! I just yesterday posted a really excellent write-up on dither from iZotope, the makers of the Ozone plugin package (that includes dithering / noise shaping). Check it out:
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=51692.0