KVR Audio

donkey tugger · Post by **donkey tugger** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:02 pm

CypherOne wrote:yo girls, what's up?

Getting in a bit of a dither aren't they?

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:02 pm

BTW Cypher, got the cash, cheers

CypherOne · Post by **CypherOne** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:03 pm

donkey tugger wrote:
CypherOne wrote:yo girls, what's up?
Getting in a bit of a dither aren't they?

somewhat limited tho.

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:03 pm

donkey tugger wrote:
CypherOne wrote:yo girls, what's up?
Getting in a bit of a dither aren't they?

Is there no limit to your humour?

more beer please...must wind up the stoners more....

CypherOne · Post by **CypherOne** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:06 pm

Kriminal wrote:BTW Cypher, got the cash, cheers

ah shit, must have entered the right a/c no...

Paresh · Post by **Paresh** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:15 pm

great responses guys - thanks. So...is the free
VST called "dither" as good as any? And do I need to know anything about settings or how to use it - I haven't dnloaded it yet.

Paresh · Post by **Paresh** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:24 pm

thanks guys - great responses. So - is the free VST called dithering as good as any? Do I need to know anything about settings or how to use it? I haven't dnloaded it yet & hopefully there are presets.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:56 pm

It's already been indicated in what circumstances you'll hear the effects of dithering, so set up a signal chain in whatever software you prefer and a/b free dither plugins and their various processing modes. Decide for yourself which is treating your audio in the way you like best.

pHz · Post by **pHz** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:33 pm

dont forget that dave (like myself) doesnt very often use externally recorded audio and so will have a slightly different view on rendering at various bit depths / samplerates and dithering than those of you who use a fair amount of multi-track recording in your work ...

... doesnt make him any more right or wrong though ...

slainte

rob

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:07 pm

Paresh wrote:great responses guys - thanks. So...is the free
VST called "dither" as good as any?

AFAIK the main differences between different flavours of dither lie in the noise shaping techniques. As dither involves adding noise to the signal this can be audible in particularly quiet passages, so most types of dither filter the noise in such a way as to keep its mathematical properties, but shift the noise to the parts of the spectrum the human ear / brain is least sensitive to.. I believe the best dithers employ the inverse of the Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves.

Contrary to Kriminals assertions, I have satisfied myself that dithered 16-bit audio sounds significantly better than truncated 16-bit audio.

in fact, I was already unhappy with the 16-bit converters in the VS-880 I used to use, before I upgraded to a DAW with a 24-bit card, and the upgrade removed exactly the brittle two-dimensional quality I was unhappy with, so I am also satisfied that recording at higher bit-depths is worthwhile.

I have yet to try out different flavours of dither however, as the only free dither I am aware of is the mda one.. I might grab some demos soon and do some careful listening.

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:42 pm

If anyone is interested, heres a clip of my old band, recorded live (in our practise room) to a Roland VS-880.

Elfin - Lizard Jam (intro)

This is about as close as you can get to Kriminal's suggestion that you "stick to 44/16", although I think the mixing engine goes to 18-bit even on these devices IIRC.

Listen carefully to the delay repeats on the guitar when its exposed at the start, and to the reverb on the drums when they kick in.. especially to the contrast when it dries up about 24 sec in.

If you can't hear the "modem noise" type distortion (never mind the lack of depth to the recording as a whole) then you need to upgrade your monitors (or train your ears) because I guarantee its there!

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:19 pm

The reverb on the drums?? This is likely to do with how the drums were recorded, not whether the master was dithered down to 16bit. There's no point in using an example like this. Just take a single reverbed drum hit and apply dither to one instance and not the other and you'll have a proper comparison.

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:33 pm

chagzuki wrote:The reverb on the drums?? This is likely to do with how the drums were recorded, not whether the master was dithered down to 16bit. There's no point in using an example like this. Just take a single reverbed drum hit and apply dither to one instance and not the other and you'll have a proper comparison.

The drums were recorded in a very dry room, and the reverb was added within the VS-880. The distortion on the reverb however, is a consequence of the bounce-downs at 16-bit required to over-dub vocals and mix it down to stereo.

This is an example of a recording that "sticks to 44/16" throughout, and required multiple bounces, hence the degredation. At the time I could hear it, but didn't know what it was or why it was there.. now I do know!

Obviously a scientific test would compare like with like..

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:37 pm

Oh, Ok, I didn't quite understand your point before. Yes, absolutely, quality will eventually suffer if tracks are constantly reprocessed and rounded to 16bit.

Paresh · Post by **Paresh** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 1:18 am

Bk to limiting - is it redundant then to use compression (at least on vocals) & then to use final mix down limiting? For that matter, w my limited engineering experience, i seem to get a hotter signal on vocals w normalizing than compression?? Is that OK, or does anyone ever use both? Thanks

limiter/dithering