Possible Clean Conversion of 16 to 8 bit WAV without Dither Hiss or Optional Distortion?

[BertKoor]

I don't recall writing the sampling (encoding) could be done naievely. I was merely discussing playing it back. Like, how can a printer with only black ink print greyscales? Same thing!
Ultimately, you only get decent results by accepting that dithering is your friend.

[gearwatcher]

Just dithering wouldn't work either.

That's exactly why DSD is it's own thing. Differential encoded as density is the crucial part of the whole concept

At that point it's simply NOT PCM any more.

And in more practical concrete terms, rather than this r/iamverysmart f**king about that's also completely misguided and wasteful, that's why you need dedicated software algos for it. Hence DSD patches for SoX

[yellowmix]

1bit PCM wouldn't be useful at all unless you're encoding 0dBFS square wave

Nope. Computer speakers with only on/off state are capable of polyphony and sample playback. Apple II, ZX Spectrum employed such techniques primarily for games. With a square wave and a fast enough clock/sample rate, by modulating the pulse width you can achieve a lot more.

See this article with lots of examples and YouTube videos if you want to learn about the different techniques to achieve it: https://forgottencomputer.com/retro/sound/

[gearwatcher]

1bit PCM wouldn't be useful at all unless you're encoding 0dBFS square wave

Nope. Computer speakers with only on/off state are capable of polyphony and sample playback. Apple II, ZX Spectrum employed such techniques primarily for games. With a square wave and a fast enough clock/sample rate, by modulating the pulse width you can achieve a lot more.

See this article with lots of examples and YouTube videos if you want to learn about the different techniques to achieve it: https://forgottencomputer.com/retro/sound/

Thanks, but I was a child in the 80s so no thanks.

We're talking about being able to encode high fidelity sound, not PWM screeching that relies on human desire to interpret noise as sound to pull something semi useful out of it.