Best way to convert 24 bit mixes to 16 bit

Kaspar · Post by **Kaspar** » Sun May 27, 2007 9:51 pm

I'm doing my CD-mastering in Waveburner Pro on my old G4 in system 9.2. It has Pow-R dithering (All three versions). A brilliant program. Apple got it together with Logic when they bought Emagic, but they appear to have "downgraded" it before releasing it for OSX in the big Logic package. I don't know if they also stripped it of Pow-R dithering.

scoreJRO · Post by **scoreJRO** » Wed May 30, 2007 12:36 am

the BEST way?

going thru the Apogee Rosetta 200.

from one DAW, digtially thru it, out to another DAW.

mrbillet · Post by **mrbillet** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:17 am

If your source was analog tape with its own background hiss does that count as dither? It's obviously not crafted for the purpose of dithering and dither noise is shaped specifically to do that, I know, but how much use is it to add another layer of noise in this particular case?

I've been transfering 30yr old 1/4" tapes to CD through DP and have been bypassing the dither on the Limiter. I wish I could trust my ears on this one but I don't and I just want to know what is considered the "proper" way.

Thanks,
Ian B.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Wed May 30, 2007 1:47 pm

Remember that some of the accolades for POW-r Dither (especially Level 3), are that it does a magnificent job of upwards conversion from 16 to 24 and from 24 to 32 bits.

This is a less common scenario, but there are times when you might need to integrate older material into a higher-spec'ed project. And just adding eight blank bits doesn't tend to lead to as musical results downstream. Of course, Digital Performer now supports mixed bit depth.

Good point about external hardware possibly still beating out even the best of the dithering plug-ins.

And I wasn't aware of that one that won the user poll. Yet I found it strange that Ozone's dithering was not included, since it IS quite good indeed and in my view beats out the Sony Oxford Limiter for transparency and depth.