The new CubaseVST/32 and Nuendo use Appogee dithering. It theoretically is better than the cheapo algorithm the came in your ver of Cubase. I don't know if it is reason alone to upgrade tho.

How does the Sonic Foundry dither stack up?

Hi Mike,

I was shocked to learn that a poor dithering algorithm can actually make your 24bit/48khz audio sound WORSE at 16bit/44khz than if you had simply recorded it at 16bit/44khz.

This is pretty much always the case. For best results, the sample frequency that you record at should match or be a multiple of the finished master sample frequency. In other words if you are creating a CD always record using 44.1kHz (or 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz).

As far as bit depth is concerned, the best dithering I've heard is Waves L2 (available as either a TDM plugin or as a hardware unit).

Greg

Is dithering needed/used when going from, say, 24 to 16 bit, 44.1kHz?

Originally posted by gabrielk:
Is dithering needed/used when going from, say, 24 to 16 bit, 44.1kHz?

It's needed ANY time you reduce wordlength which means most signal processing operations. Otherwise you get a lot of distortion. Not dithering is, in my experience, the principle cause of that nasty edgy "digital" sound.

It's needed ANY time you reduce wordlength which means most signal processing
operations. Otherwise you get a lot of distortion. Not dithering is, in my
experience, the principle cause of that nasty edgy "digital" sound.

So does this mean that you want to dither each time you add an effect, or would it be preferred to wait and dither when you make the final bit depth and/or resampling changes. :confused:

Dithering should be the very last thing you do - and only once. Better yet, if your project is going to be professionally mastered, don't dither at all. Send it out in it's original form and let the Mastering Engineer do the bit reduction and/or sampling rate changes with his/her own choice of dither.