Audio Dithering 101 - What is Dither?

Train your ears in just minutes a day: quiztones.com
Get Unlimited Premium Mix Training: theproaudiofiles.com/members
An explanation and visual breakdown of audio dithering.
More videos on analyzing effects: • Analyzing Effects: Com...

[@cornbone]

this is the BEST explanation of this I've seen!! i finally felt the concept really click in my brain. thank you so much! 7 years later and this video is still so helpful to many people

[@fureaongaku]

thanks dude, literally no one talks about this topic so well done.

[@Masalaofficial]

The best explanation that can be find for that ! Tnx !

[@davdcl499]

This was godlike. Thank you, sir.

[@Chrisp80]

Definitely gave me a new insight about dithering. I really had no idea how it worked, just that it was necessary. Thank you!

[@musicmashane3727]

Wow! What an amazing video to explain this using extreme examples so we can actually both hear and see what's going on! I love this and also think it's the best video on Dithering out there that I've come across so far!

[@drampadreg1386]

A great video to understanding one of the most important "bits" of digital recording, especially if you are going from analog to digital and things just aren't working like they used to! I think this is the first lesson anyone entering digital recording needs to understand and your video did that quite nicely! Thanks for the helpful information.

[@MixmanD28]

This is a super-clear discussion of an abstruse topic, and makes a very good case for noise shaping!! :) Thank you!!

[@SirArthurTheGreat]

That abstruse was an abstruse autological word.

[@mannyleigh2571]

This is one of the most useful videos I have seen in a long time Thank You!

[@MonsieurVersatile]

Absolutely brilliant, thanks so much for this. Finally understand what dither does (and why) and I've been working with digital audio for over ten years!

[@ColorfullHD]

Very, very good tutorial for newbies like me who just discovered the concept of dithering. It's something not talked about alot but it' so seems to be very useful. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@theevolversuniverse65]

Thanks so much for taking the time to organize this video with audio examples because when I read an article on dithering, I understood what it was saying, but I couldn't visualize what it was saying. Now I can!

[@proaudiofiles]

New video from Eric Tarr all about dithering.

[@Guitargraphlessonsonline]

Very informative. I learnt to add dither when reducing bit depth as a kinda rule but I never really understood why or what it's doing. Now I do. Thanks a mil :)

[@vincentsimeon6742]

I barely make comments on the net but this vidéo is really the best one to understand dither I ever saw on the net (And I am a french language guy). Congratulations Sir Tarr !

[@aleksanderliskauskas1266]

probably my second comment on youtube ever; but i think you did an incredible job of explaining this concept. Great job man, subscribed!

[@PeterReidJones]

Stunning to see the effect in real-time, cool vid man!

[@Spoolz07]

Now I understand!! Superbly explained, thank you very much. Excellent presentation.

[@janminor1172]

Excellent visualization, great job!

[@absinha6209]

Brilliant dude! I had no idea what dithering was. Makes complete sense now! Thanks! You have excellent examples!

[@matrixate]

Fantastic job. Absolutely brilliant demonstration.

[@CORNELIUSJOHNSONCJAZZ]

Great illustration on Dither. I viewed this to refresh myself as a mixer and mastering engineer. I got because I was being a second ear for a song and low and mid level random noises in a supposively mastered version. I a MTSU Recording graduate 2014.

[@AkshatMehrotra07]

very well made video. great explanation. Never understood dithering like this before. thanks a lot. Could you make one on summing of audio and its effects in ITB mix downs?

[@matrixate]

Hey, did you ever get a answer on bouncing methods? Print?

[@AkshatMehrotra07]

not really.. few opt for print method and others are fine with a simple bounce. Have read a lot of reviews. But i have found that daw bounces sometimes loose quality which can be perhaps retained by print.

[@northrop_]

One of the best videos I've ever watched, thanks!

[@seantomalty3062]

Thank you for taking your time to explain! Very well presented. Clear and to the point! subscribed.

[@nsipid]

Great video. Well spoken, informative, and visually satisfying. Thank you.

[@ilan.woodward]

Ive still got loads to learn and loads to understand, but this was so great and informative for a beginner like me. I can hear the differences and sort of see what causes the magic. I just need to dig in with time and practice. Thanks for making it conceptually graspable!

[@twoHRdrive]

this was just interesting from a technical standpoint, too... great video

[@kuldeepgohel29]

you are a GEM MY FRIEND! world won't need schools if KZbin is utilized in such an exceptional way!

[@Team-kc8zy]

Thank you so much for explaining so visually

[@totfosk]

Finally an awesome explanation with an awesome example!!!!! Thanks!!

[@DepressedCapitalist]

Excellent explanation! Clear and to the point. Cheers

[@JamesRJKR]

Very informative, Great work!

[@sonikculture]

Superb video..... so well explained... its amazing. Thank you soo much

[@GavinMulhallSilinder]

great video Eric, concise and very informative, thanks :)

[@cholkymilkmirage4984]

this is amazing. so easy to understand

[@rh666]

Nicely done video, thank you!

[@Shem56]

Fantastic explanation! Thanks so much

[@ShadyShakra]

The cops came in the end. They wanted to bust you for being awesome. Brilliant explanation. You made dithering sound a bit less boring!

[@MichaelW.1980]

When it comes to 24 bit and dithering, I like how Dan Worrall did put it: „If you have to amplify a signal by 100dB to hear a problem, it’s not really a problem.“ But yea, for 16 bit, dithering is kinda mandatory.

[@showingpig01]

Excellent video! Very easy to follow!

[@KennWall]

Best explanation ever for this topic!

[@spbmac]

Awesome explanation! Thank you very very much!

[@imaginarytube]

Thank you, Erik. YOU ARE A GOOD MAN!

[@RaemusGuitar]

Thank you very much :) that was quite educational and the visual demonstrations helped a lot :)

[@jorgebraga3741]

Thank you very much! Your teaching is very good, congratulations!

[@WitchDoktorProductions]

You're brilliant. So thorough

[@momins-topic4470]

Thanks for this important topics 😍

[@owenkutzscher3038]

Wow! Killer video!

[@wahyuarief9046]

Finally a good one explanation. Than u so so much

[@1loveMusic2003]

Best Dither video ever!

[@denialvanish]

Excellent video! Thanks very much for this.

[@GEMINDIGO]

Thanks buddy.That was very well explained and very helpful!

[@averypiper9833]

dithering is so cool lol. i dont think it’s boring. thank you fam

[@MichaelPopescu]

Excelent demonstration! Thank you!!

[@piperrac]

Thank you so much Eric. This is amazingly helpful to really understand what this process is about. But I do have some questions. Why should we lower resolution when we bounce to a stereo track in mastering (or mixing)? What if we leave it as it is or lower it as less as possible? Are there playback devices that do not work on higher resolutions or are all of them different? What is the criteria to choose the right bit depth? Thanks a lot man. Cheers

[@lens8933]

thanks. such an amazing explanation

[@markdavenport2613]

Fantastic! I finally get it. Thank You!

[@slowlearner7778]

Great presentation!

[@bentyreman5769]

do you ever dither form 32 bit floating point to 24 bits? I usually don't bother but wonder if it is affecting my quality

[@JohanSegeborn]

Thanks, great explanation!

[@howtodostuff1244]

I guess you already know that you're a genius. If it wasn't for you, I would go to my grave never understanding what dithering was. Thank you 😊

[@voraceOnline]

Great Work! Thanks!

[@AndrewThiriot]

Thank you. Great explanation!

[@zoolmakesmusic4920]

Great videos!

[@xyzphyr]

Very helpful, thank you!

[@LiebnerZappleProject]

Very helpful! Thx Eric

[@rongyau1998]

Amazing video 🙏🏽

[@TheAnthonycoulter]

Wow that was very informative!! Thank you!!! 😁

[@JJ-mc1tr]

Very well expanation !!!! Now I understand what dithering mean. Thank you, sir

[@MikhalB]

Grate video very informative!

[@emmapablo7321]

very great explanation thanks a lot.. my question is this; i do parallel comp, with high shelf eq on my low and high freq just as u did in this video for dithering, its a way of adding harmonics to my mixes, please do i stand a chance of destroying my mix if i apply dithering? are there differences btw parallel comp with parallel eq and dithering

[@proffessasvids]

Brilliant! Thankyou sir! Xx

[@jurapuclin]

Thanks,,Great video!

[@readyfortomorrowmyanmar]

Very nice tutorial

[@jay2xtremefy]

Nice! Thank you for the info.

[@nigel_redmon]

Very good video-I'm sorry I have to complain about one detail. You probably noticed that the shaped-dither demo starting around 13:57 doesn't really pay off as planned. Unlike the earlier example, it doesn't suck the distortion peaks down by decorrelation, it just buries them in noise. In fact, the lowest distortion peak still sticks out above the noise. The problem is that "noise shaped dither" isn't "dither with shaped noise", it's "dither that has been noise-shaped". The shaping happens as part of the truncation, not to the noise addition before the truncation. It's really "error shaping", to differentiate is from the broadband noise that's added, but to engineers, error and noise are synonyms.

[@lunix8028]

real nice! thank you

[@mariacvale]

Thank you! Subscribed.

[@IntheDAW]

I love this video

[@luismrguimaraes]

Cool video. I'd love to see an example of an actual song tho, since I couldn't hear the harmonics of the sine wave from 8.0 bit depth up.

[@charleselmore4707]

Very helpful. Thanks!

[@tokero5199]

Noice! Very good explanation.

[@directingguy]

Great video! I have a quick question - the nature of harmonics is to get down in amplitude as the frequency goes up, so why would we like to add more noise there? It seems more rational to add the noise at the mid frequencies so we can mask them better no?

[@goczangabor24]

Guy Shilo i'm no expert on the topic and the harmonics indeed reduce in amplitude as you go up the spectrum, but human hearing is a different thing, there's the fletcher-munson curve, which kind of "allows" you to boost the higher frequency noise to maximize the masking effect and it still won't be audible unlike in the upper mids. so my guess would be, you do it because "you can"

[@MikeHomerun]

Nice video! Love it! I have some question that just curios to me. What's the point of adding noise at 15-20khz as you not gonna hear it anyway, Isn't just belling out some middle enough for noise shaping? Thanks!

[@bananaman7458]

Why wouldn't you be able to hear it?

[@ArmandoBreeveldNL]

Nice vid! Learned alot! But is this dithering still relavant these days? Because everything has a super high quality standard now right?

[@Andrew_Renko]

godlike tutorial, thank you

[@PaulArcane]

Thanks for the video! I have a question, what if you put an EQ with a high cut in the master, let's say around 16kHz, does dithering still works? Also, how do you know how much dither amount to apply?

[@AS-ug7gr]

Thank you!

[@lazylance3991]

thanks this helps a lot! what if I export a master file in 24bit adding some dither noise and it gets bitreduced at a later stage when being converted. will the dither noise help preventing the quantization noise as well?

[@rahulwagh5000]

you said we intentionally add noise but when the bit is reduced the new bit reduction noise will be added and there is a previous one too what if both frequencies crash with each other, so here i recommend always invert the polarity of signal of the noise we add intentionally so it cancels the new noise which is added by bit reduction , what do you all think

[@kingshuk1990]

very good Demonstration

[@proaudiofiles]

Thanks!

[@herseem]

Excellent explanation and tutorial, except for the minor technical error - what you described as 2-bit must have been at least 3-bit as 2 bits would only have a maximum of 4 levels. But top marks for making a technically obscure issue easy to understand

[@hendrik2167]

So basically i need to do this after i am done with my mix? Should i then put the entire mix to a lower bitrate and add Some noise?

[@ZaccariahMusic]

Oh I get it now, thanks

[@matrixate]

So, now that the mix has been printed as say, 16bit @ 44.1kHz utilizing the dither plugin, do we just find the file in the audio audio folder and use that for all intents and purposes? If I understand correctly, when we want to export to mp3 instead, using 3rd party software, should we print the mix as a non-dithered file and then use whatever 3rd party software to create the mp3 since it also applies dither to the final file?

[@hugoborel2096]

Thank youuuuuu

[@TheDiamondShoppeBeats]

Great video...

[@jyun7360]

Finally, I know how dither does the job!

[@valevenga797]

very nice vid

[@CastanuelaStudios]

Amazing, thx.