Dither, when to?

Bob Katz Leave a Comment

From: Mark Luckett

Hi friends. I consider your site one of my most valuable resources. Thanks for your work and help. I have a question. After reading your articles on dithering and word lengths I am much more informed about the subject. I recently got a new masterlink and mixed a “practice” mix to it at 96/24 as you recommended. I wrote a 24 bit .aiff file to cdrand transferred the material to pc to edit in sound forge. Did my edits,got ready to save the file and convert to 44,1/16. Opened Waves L1 ultra to dither then suddenly realized that I didn’t know which order to do this in. Should I resample, then dither, THEN run bit converter? Or resample, bit convert, THEN run L1 maximize + dither, I’m really confused here and I want this to be the best that I can do here on my own. Dither then convert, or vice-versa? Please help. Thanks in advance.
Best Regards,
Mark

Hi, Mark. Dithering to 16 bit should always be the last step.
Resampling to a new sample rate should always be the penultimate step. Keep your sample rate and wordlength to the longest possible until the next to the last step, then resample, then dither!

Hope this helps,

Bob

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