White noise at low volume VS Dither

[Brandon203113]

So if I just place some white noise at a pretty low volume, would that be any different than dithering or would that essentially be the same thing but allowing me to hear it before having to bounce it out and listen back??? Also, when you dither, does it mask the side information as well? so if i were to try and mimic it, i would have to create stereo noise as well???

[Burillo]

dithering is usually shaped, i.e. it's not just white noise, but usually an EQ'd white noise. usually with all of the energy skewed towards the high end.

[Brandon203113]

dithering is usually shaped, i.e. it's not just white noise, but usually an EQ'd white noise. usually with all of the energy skewed towards the high end.

when you bounce with dither, it seems the bottom isnt eq'd out at all, so it covers up the low end too, but doesnt that cause phase issues? or no because its at too low of a volume???

[Tj Shredder]

Dither is masking the last bits of the signal. @16-bit a bit more than -96 dB... Unless you do classical music or have really long fades into silence, nothing to worry about, let the experts of your DAW or plug-ins deal with it...

[FTresample]

If you only use white noise, your file size may explode (depends on your rendering/compression algorithm). Dither uses distribution functions for the noise to achieve the bit masking Tj Shredder describes. This also leads to smaller files compared to white noise.