x
anonymous 21 April 2002

ok guys, I'm having problems here. I listened to the posted A/B clips using the CRane Song dither CD. Another acquaintance of mine from another forum bought a copy after seeing the flap generated over here.

I will admit that on both his and your clips, the only difference I heard was in the very very quietest sections of the song. No instruments jumping out in the mix at me, no added warmth, fullness, etc...to my ears.

It was killing me, so I loaded the A/B clips up in the DAW, inverted the phase on one, and mixed them down. I ended up with what sounded like white noise with a lot of bass at a level around -60 db rms. That's it. Frequency analysis confirmed this.

Can someone tell me what the big deal is, and I'm asking because I sincerely want to know, not to be a smartass. I figure you guys know much more about this than I, and there must be something I'm missing. I know of a few other people who have admitted semi-privately they couldn't hear much difference, but I reckon they're too ashamed to make a fool of themselves like I'm doing.

I am a grasshopper and I await your enlightenment. Help a brother out, would ya?

Comments

Kev Sun, 04/21/2002 - 23:16

I'm with kermit here,

I have too much respect for many around here to dismiss it out of hand but I am having trouble coming to grips with this. I have this in the $1000 Monster Cable bucket ... a bit of hocus-pocus..?

Perhaps it is my monitoring is just not up to it?

anonymous Mon, 04/22/2002 - 09:32

>>Keep in mind that the effectiveness of this type of thing is *very* subjective and *might* only be audible in an accurate room. This is why the debate over things such as jitter and dither come about - if it's only effectively better in a precise environment, then why bother?

fair enough, I was begining to worry that all the folks who've told me I suck were right :)

joe lambert Mon, 04/22/2002 - 13:26

I haven't listened to the posted files either. But we have done several tests over the years listening to different types of dither. There is a difference. With that said, to say they are dramatic is usually overstating it. If you have a proper listening environment and just compare the dither you can hear the difference between types of dither clearly. These are the things we as mastering engineers listen to because we are trying to squeeze every bit (pun intended) out of the music we are working with.

joe lambert Tue, 04/23/2002 - 05:41

Why? Because we are trying to push the bounderies of hi fidelity. Small improvements add up over the course of making a record. It's no different than listening to different guitars or different microphones. Some people can't tell the difference but a great guitar player hears it immediatly. And all these things added together is what makes for records that you love listening to.

x

User login