Adding dither to your track

[ritaheed]

Who adds dither to there tracks? does it make a huge difference with discising the digital distortion? a take it this is done at the mastering stage?

What im not to sure about with dither is the adding of different noise shapes (rectangle, gaussian and triangle)... if i was to add white noise then that is simply adding a rectangle noise shape?

also can someone explain the signal to noise ratio in relation with the noise shapes - not sure what that means

cheers in advance :)

[rhythmtech]

unless you are going from (x) bit rate to (y) bit rate you dont need to worry about it.

all it does is make quantization errors random to break up blocks of limit cycles.

if you just use standard shaping and standard noise you wont go wrong for your purposes.

[ritaheed]

so unless im going to a lower bit depth then i dont really need to use it?

what do you mean with standard noise and shaping?

so is its not common in electronic music to use it? what about other music such as bands etc?

[rhythmtech]

yes, you need to use it when dropping bit rates.

all plugs that dither will give you noise and shaping options and usually offer a "standard" setting. chose 1 of each. unless you are pro mastering you really wont notice any differance at all.

doesnt matter what style the music is. it needs to be used for dropping bit rates.

[ritaheed]

ah cool so there's dither plugs! nice one. any you would recommend?

[rhythmtech]

ah cool so there's dither plugs! nice one. any you would recommend?

ive always used the ones that come on limiters as you generally limit last in your fx chain. therefore tve dither is the very last thing that happens before you get your 44/16 wav.

a few limiters that have dither are:

any of the waves L series
voxengo elephant
slate FG-x

[Mattias_Fridell]

Sony Soundforge 10 have a nice Dither function from Izotope, also Sonalksis Ultimate-D is good.
Unless knowing what your doing and making some kind of finalization or pre-master / master yourself for a label or whatever it can be, don't dither / re-quantize yourself.
When external matering service is being used let them dither your tracks, send tracks away in 24 bit.

[ritaheed]

cheers boys!

[The_Laughing_Man]

I do a lot of dithering when mastering peoples music.
I tend to get best results with Roger Nichols products, for dithering anyhow, the algorithms give clean results.
However a fair few plugs do a great job.
As said, you only need when changing bit rate