All About Dithering

I've got the Waves Ultramaximizer and Izotope Ozone for mastering and dithering on my DAW, but compared to some outboard gear, do you think something like a (BBE?) SonicMaximizer and a high-quality rack parametric EQ could get the job done as far as mastering goes? Of course with high quality far fields, acoustic treatment, etc. etc.
 
The sound is not being degraded (so-to-speak) like it does when going from 96Khz to 44.1Khz.

There is scientifically no difference between 96k and 44.1k during playback.

If a function x(t) contains no frequencies higher than B hertz, it is completely determined by giving its ordinates at a series of points spaced 1/(2B) seconds apart.

The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem

That basically says, a signal with frequencies ranging up to 22khz will be perfectly modelled by a signal that has a sample rate of 44khz or higher (44.1).

So no. 96khz does not sound 'better'. The only time there is a difference is during DSP.
 
I can't hear the difference between dithered and non-dithered audio. I tested myself on some of my tunes to find out. I also tried to test the difference between noise-shaped dither and regular dither. I used 32-bit float source files of a 1 kHz sine wave slowly fading linearly from 100% to 0% over a few seconds. For each type of dither I rendered a different 16-bit file.

At low volumes I had to crank up the volume really super high to hear anything at all. Honestly, many of the noise-shapings sounded worse than non-shaped.

Ultimately I gave up on all of that stuff. I used to do everything by the book until I realised that in most cases I can't hear the differences and when I can hear the difference, I prefer the non-shaped usually, even for triangular TPD which is supposed to be the best.
 
Dither only when required (i.e. just before truncating the bit-depth). There's no point in adding dither after limiting (I still don't understand why so many limiter come with a dither option).
 
i never really understood dithering. I think its one of those things that you can go through music production and never really understand.
 
I always use dithering

---------- Post added at 08:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:11 AM ----------

It should always be used lol

---------- Post added at 08:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:12 AM ----------

yeah but when u record vocals you should always use it

---------- Post added at 08:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:15 AM ----------

I don't understand it either but its makes the final mix sound good
 
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