To dither, or not to dither?

[BertKoor]

I've erring on the side of caution, and just not dithering.

The side of caution says you should dither

[irpacynot]

I've erring on the side of caution, and just not dithering.

The side of caution says you should dither

Ugh...you're confusing me now. I thought you were the one who said only dither when exporting down.

Now I need to go back and re-read this entire thread.

[BertKoor]

Then perhaps I don't understand what you're doing. Wasn't this about exporting all along?

If dithering is an option on importing a 16bit wav in your project, then indeed skip that. It's likely already dithered when it was made, so you'd just add faint noise.

[mjolnir]

if you're not really sure, do it both ways:

1) dithered render
2) render without dither

and then compare them.
if you really can't hear any difference, then i'd recommend ignoring or skipping dither options from then and on out.

test it with 32-bit, 24-bit, and 16-bit.
if you can't hear it, can anybody else hear it?
do you get any complaints?

i quit using dither forever and i don't miss it.
i think it was a scam except for special 16-bit cases and of course 8-bit like in SoundEdit 1.0 from around 1988.

[ultrashock]

After 18 khz cut into Low Pass filter and make Render with dither and the sound seems cleaner ))

[swilow11]

When bouncing a track/clip in Bitwig, I'm choosing to not dither despite knowing it's essentially inaudible. If I can just as easily choose not to dither as to choose, I'm all for not adding unnecessary noise to a track. My rather murky logic, is dither will ultimately be applied when bouncing the master and it...kinda stacks up if you're re-dithering dithered tracks? No idea if true tbh

[irpacynot]

Then perhaps I don't understand what you're doing. Wasn't this about exporting all along?

If dithering is an option on importing a 16bit wav in your project, then indeed skip that. It's likely already dithered when it was made, so you'd just add faint noise.

Yeah, this was in reference to exporting. But I thought the consensus was that, unless I'm rendering down to a lower bit or sample rate, it's generally better to bypass dithering.