I’m really trying to understand some of the more ‘technical’ elements of music production with Ableton, and would like to know how the different dithering options offered effect the final exported sound.
I have a 32 bit file at a 48000 sample rate that I would like to bounce down to a 16 bit 41000 file ready for CD. The track is electronic ambient. Which option would be best from Ableton’s Export options?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I’ve always believed that 24bit 41000 and no dither option is what you should use.
this is how you want to send to be mastered
What the man above said
24bit and no dither is fine, but if you want to put it on a CD then it needs to be 16bit and have a dither added.
Basically a dither is noise thats added to a signal to try and reduce some of the effects digitizing a sound has. So a bit crusher is an extreme example of roughly the kind of distortion that you will get if you don’t use a dither. I would suggest you use one of the POW dithers, they are noise shaped to try and make them harder to hear, and the different types of POW (r1, r2, r3) are designed for slightly different musical types. I can’t remember off the top of my head what they are, but a quick google should help you if you’re interested. I use POW-r2 on basically everything, trance being what I mostly produce. And I think I chose that one based on what POW-r2 is recommended for, not from actual listening tests, and I will explain why that is…
Your decision of dither noise in electronic music basically makes no difference at all. Every other decision you’ve made in producing your track will be more important than this one, so don’t worry about it too much. The reason is that electronic music is so loud that no one is going to be able to hear your dither noise anyway. In very dynamic music, like classical, it matters a bit more because on the very quiet sections you might hear the noise, if you know what you’re listening for.
So to be honest which one you use really doesn’t matter. Just make sure you do use one!
That’s great - especially the very thorough description above which has taught me a lot. I had no idea what dithering actually was before. I’ll google the different types you mention and see which come up as recommended.
Thanks again.