Mixing & Mastering Essentials: When, Why And How To Use Dithering

When it comes to audio recording, mixing, processing and mastering, you may very well have seen the option to "dither" your audio at certain points in the process. But what is dithering, and what is it for? In this short video from the course Audio Concepts 105: Sound Recording, Joe Albano explains exactly what it is, and how, why and when you should be using it.

Audio Concepts 105: Sound Recording

All digital audio contains low-level quantization distortion, a by-product of analog to digital conversion. It's especially prevalent in quiet parts of a song, and can appear when listening on headphones, particularly as a song fades out. Joe uses just such an example to demonstrate how audio from CD can exhibit this problem. He then adds dithering processing - appropriate to the digital audio format he is using - to show how it can remove this distortion.

He even reveals that although there are different noise shaping curves you can use, in reality, any of them will be an improvement over not dithering at all. Be sure to check out the rest of the videos in this course for a complete guide to sound recording, its principles and practice.