Which Dither?

[ashtonron]

hi,

are you using live's dither or a mastering plugin like Izotope Ozone 4(or similar)?

here's what i do(when using Ozone 4's dither) :

get the Sonalksis free-g plugin(http://www.sonalksis.com).

put one BEFORE the mastersuite,lower the gain to around -40dB.

make sure everything in the mastering plugin is turned off,but leave dither on(obviously).dither is what you should do LAST,and nothing AFTER that(so no normalizing or whatever)

put another free-g AFTER the mastering plugin,and turn up the gain as high as necessary,and listen on a good audio interface with good converters through good headphones.

this allows you to HEAR what dithering actually does.you'll be surprised how much difference you actually hear between the types.one sounds grainy,one distorts,etc etc....

when you found the one you think sounds best(when you don't hear any aliasing or distortion anymore),delete the free-g plugins,and dither your stuff.

hope that helps.

here's some more info on mastering :

http://www.tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html

Very interesting thanks...

[SubFunk]

And to add, as tarekith said in 95% of cases you are good to go with POW-r2
besides that is also a reason why you have mastering engineers for. you want to do it all by yourself, fine!
get some decent monitors and train your ears! learn how and what to listen for
do you think professionel sound & mastering engineers have all 'golden ears' ? BULLSHIT!
they simply trained their ears, just the way you learn swimming or cycling, by simply starting to rely (oh, did i spelled that right? I mean trust) on their ears and by paying attention to details and by investing into the most important item ever in any studio, MONITORS, instead of buying fancy synths first.

Period. end of also partly a rant.
Not addressed at anyone in particular, just a personal statement, summing up several threads involving 'listening' and 'use your ears'

maybe i should start a separate thread, this is bugging me since a very long time, everyone seems to be ok with learning, swimming or cycling or driving a car, but only a little amount wants to learn to listen.... golden ears... pffffft.... Muahhahaha!!!

OK, i started a separate thread http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=131845