Mastering: Dithering

[zongkong]

good moaning to you all.

as the subject line inclines, this thread is about dithering. or at least, that's what I hope it'll be about :)

the thing is, I don't have a clue about it.

does anyone know?
or does anyone maybe know of a link to somewhere that explains it?

many thanks on förhud.

[marcin]

dithering is process used to reduce audio bit resolution by adding some noise to audio signal, specially usefull when you use high bit resolution and you need to deliver it as 16 bit.

[lo_fi]

well..... whatever.... i heard that dithering is adding noise to hide (mask) some unwanted sounds (other noises - for example that which was recorded to some sample and you cannot reduce them because if you would the sample would lose quality)..... so sometimes sounds with 'dithering noises' are being more comfortable for your ears than those with 'unmasked noises'...
if you want you can hear it in Roni Size productions.... i think he was using dithering specially for contrabass sounds.....

[Django]

it´s a very good archive for such questions, but it´s only in german...

http://homerecording.soundsamples.de/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8

[Sheridan]

Dither is a low level noise added to a signal to counter quantization error.

quantization error is distortion that is caused by rounding an amplitude measurement up or down to the nearest quantization interval.

dither is good to add to low level signal because it will help create a louder combined signal. also it is good to add when as marcin pointed out you are going down in bit depth. when you convert from say 24 to 16 bit your word length is shortened by either truncation (cutting a part off) or rounding up or down. both of these methods cause qunatization error which sounds nasty. dither helps to smooth that out and make it sound more natural.

[zongkong]

Thanks a lot y'all; you've brought light into this area for me.

"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you"