Day 2 and my post got to #41...will bump and try again.

Day 3...I'm going to get a volleyball,paint its face,call it willson and start having a conversation with it if nobodiy answers soon. The tip came from the vegas news page so I think that somebody at sofo might also have to answer as well.

999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall...999,999,999 bottles of beer...

Someone please answer the man! I wanna know the answer too. (If that's any consolation).

- pup

I can answer the question. When you are working in Vegas all of the mixing/math/effects are done in floating point math (I believe or really high bit depths at least). Where dither comes in handy is when you have to output this high resolution audio to a fixed bit depth audio device (even your sound card has a fixed bit depth when converting digital audio to analog audio). More bits gives more fidelity, everyone knows that. Dither comes in when you're converting from the high resolution data to fixed bit depth data, such as 16-bit for CD. Dither helps the low level signals which are being quantized. For example a 24bit number will be quantized most likely to:
10110101 01101111 01010011 01010101 - 24-bit
10110101 01101111 - 16-bit

The thing is what was cut off was adding to the audio and when you quantize it can add very low level quantization noise (quantize a 16-bit signal to 8 or 4 bits, and listen to a fade out and you'll hear it amplified immensely).
Dither injects low level noise for the last bit/bits that are quantized and this reduces the quanitization noise. Dither is essentially noise that's added to the audio to reduce a digital quanitization artifact.
You only really need to put it on the master bus when you're rendering to a final format. You probably don't want to do it if the output, say 24-bit files, are going to a mastering house as they'll apply dither going to 16 bit for CD.
Dither is art as well as science and my little discussion is way oversimplified.
There are types of dither, like "triangular" that describe the statistical distribution of the additive noise.
In general it's a good thing, but you should use it wisely and carefully cause you can hear it.
B

Good answer from our friend at Dolby!

SHTUNOT,

How's the Ozone mastering tool?
I've been looking into it and it seems
cool, but I've also had good success with
the Sound Forge effects and Waves plugins.

I've also seen the same SF Dither suggestion
in Vegas Tips and wondered about it.
It seems like there's no need prior to the end
of the mastering process, especially since
Sound Forge now accepts 24 bit files.
But then I know I could stand to learn more
about this issue so if anyone could give me
a scenerio non-hardware related, I'd be glad to hear it.

peace.

And yes,
I vote (again) for the audio only forum.

doctorfish

When I read the tip it was sorta saying to have a dither per buss. I've always mixed to 24bit/44.1 wave files---brought them into soundforge 5 for mastering---THEN dithered to 16bit/44.1. I can't see myself not doing this because it doesn't make any sense to apply dithering to the file "before" mastering...at least I've never heard of anyone who has successfully. Anyway so far my experiences with the Izotope Mastering system has been a mix of bad and good. Bad...the plugin has soooo much depth to it in term of features and ways of manipulating the audio that I've seemed to mix more in the way of "trying to use every toy at my disposal" instead of "mixing for what the song needs to be commercially viable and not only a artistic expression of my own". In other words getting the job done! I always find myself rereading parts of the manual and trying out different techniques when I should be listening to the mix and adding tweaks where necessary. There is a time and a place for all those features...just not ALL of them in every tune. I've spoken via email with them and have sent my list of tweaks/wishlist for the next upgrade and it looks like it will kick even more A$$ than before. They are definitely are working on their own proprietary dithering algorithm to add to the end of their plugin chain so that you get the highest quality possible. Go to the site and read the specks on the plugin...It was a throw up between T-racks versus Izotope. I'm really really really glad I went this route!!![Izotope]
Though if you already have all the waves plugins,especially the mastering bundle you should be set. I wonder if anyone has both mastered using Waves plugins AND Izotope could post their results as to what plugins did the most justice to their/clients songs. Also could you email those guys at Izotope so that they could add some improvements to their system too.

My other question wasn't answeed though: What is everyones output max when exporting to a stereo wave?[from Vegas!] Do you apply any comp,etc to you master outs at all? I try to leave mine at max -3db peak so that I have room to play with in SF5. Good technique or no? In other words I don't push the mix like I could untill SF.

What does your mastering plugin chain usually look like? Tips for getting the hottest master? Later. Thanks.

Here we go again...999,999,998 bottles of beer on the wall...999,999,998 bottles of beer...

Setup #1 Waves C4 into Waves L1 (oldie but Goodie) -0.1 output
Setup #2 Ozone (this one is new and very good) -0.2 output
Setup #3 Waves LinMB into Waves L2 (I love this one) 0.0 output
Setup #4 Waves LinEQ Broadband into Waves L2 (my second love) 0.0 output
Setup #5 SF DMB into SF Wave Hammer (this is cool too) -0.3 output

my 2cents
George Ware