Nerd Alert: we’re going into depth here. But that’s okay, is it? In this interview with Brendon Heinst from Trptk, we talk about Dithering. The ‘art’ of adding ‘noise’, to prevent noise. We ask whether it is also necessary with High-Res files. Or DSD. In short: it’s an in-depth interview about an interesting technique that is inextricably linked to digital audio.
Dithering is simply explained, ‘adding noise’ to a digital file when converting a higher-bit resolution to a lower bit resolution. It is done to avoid quantization errors. So it’s used when we go from 24 bits to 16 bits. When recalculation values, samples can sometimes fall in between two values. So rounding must be done. To make these a bit more natural, dithering is used.
Now it sounds quite bizarre, but also with dithering the timbre of a track can be influenced somewhat. There are many kinds of dither. One can sound better than the other. So in that sense it’s kind of an artistic choice…
Brendon tells his vision on dithering. What species there are, whether it is still useful for high-res and whether it is also useful for DSD.
