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Dithering & noise shaping - When/where/how?

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mlind:

--- Quote from: preglow on October 29, 2006, 01:39:03 PM ---Most of our lossy codecs decode to a bit depth that's significantly higher than the 16 bits that are used for output. For example, MP3 is decoded to 29 bits and Ogg Vorbis to 25 bits.
--- End quote ---

Aha! This I didn't know!
What are the options right now? Can I test with/without myself?
I guess this is used also for the optical output, as it should be limited to 16 bits.
Would you consider this power consuming (thinking battery life) - e.g. compared to using the software eq?

Without testing in THIS context I know I am generally PRO-dither.

Newer Apogee products use a 22kHz "bias" signal instead of audible noise, but that's expensive stuff.
(http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/uv22hr.php)

preglow:

--- Quote from: mlind on October 30, 2006, 04:34:09 AM ---
--- Quote from: preglow on October 29, 2006, 01:39:03 PM ---Most of our lossy codecs decode to a bit depth that's significantly higher than the 16 bits that are used for output. For example, MP3 is decoded to 29 bits and Ogg Vorbis to 25 bits.
--- End quote ---

Aha! This I didn't know!
What are the options right now? Can I test with/without myself?
I guess this is used also for the optical output, as it should be limited to 16 bits.
Would you consider this power consuming (thinking battery life) - e.g. compared to using the software eq?
Without testing in THIS context I know I am generally PRO-dither.

--- End quote ---
Compared to all the five EQ bands at once, this is cheap. It's probably the same CPU complexity as one/two EQ bands, depending on which DAP you've got.
Yes, it will affect optical out as well, and will probably even benefit more from dithering than the analogue output.
The options are dither on/off :). As for testing, just go ahead and try. The dithering will be switched on and off just by moving the cursor in the dithering selection screen, so should be easy to discover if you hear any difference or not. I'm warning you, though, you'll need a good set of ears to hear this with earphones. I'm generally pro-dithering myself, but I can't for the life of me hear any difference in this case.


--- Quote from: mlind on October 30, 2006, 04:34:09 AM ---Newer Apogee products use a 22kHz "bias" signal instead of audible noise, but that's expensive stuff.
(http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/uv22hr.php)

--- End quote ---
Yeah, the Apogee stuff is good, but as far as I know, their stuff is based only on designing good noise shapers. What they describe on that page can be achieved with dithering and high order noise shaping alone.

Llorean:
Honestly, all three of the samples at their page hurt my ears quite a bit (dither, uv22hr and truncate) but the *least* painful was their Truncate sample. The audio itself was the worst sounding, but at least the noise wasn't causing me pain while listening to it.

preglow:

--- Quote from: Llorean on October 30, 2006, 06:39:51 AM ---Honestly, all three of the samples at their page hurt my ears quite a bit (dither, uv22hr and truncate) but the *least* painful was their Truncate sample. The audio itself was the worst sounding, but at least the noise wasn't causing me pain while listening to it.

--- End quote ---
This sounds like 3 bit audio or something. Quite useless as a test case, since the noise is so loud it'll start masking out the sound it was supposed to enhance. You'd probably find you come to other conclusions if they had put out more realistic samples.
The dithering noise sounds like it's way too loud anyway, wouldn't be surprised if these samples turn out somewhat biased...

Llorean:
Strange bias where the one I like the least is their preferred sample. ;)

But I listened to your 8-bit dither flac as well, and honestly I like the undithered case there the most as well. The constant hiss in the other two is just not my thing.

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