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Re: A lot of people don't understand dither

"A good mic, mic pre amp and analog console have dynamic range of around 130dB. A good ADC will have dynamic range slightly exceeding 20 bits.
So, the noise floor of electronics alone are too low to produce self dithering when truncating from 24 to 20."

Please read back and consider the case that I outlined, where 24 or more tracks have to be mixed to a final stereo master. Or do you deem this not representative for the present state in the music industry? Even when all individual tracks are at around 20b dynamic range, their sum will have a higher noise floor unless massive-scale noise gating is used during mixdown (as in the old days).

There are a handful of ADC chips that resolve near to 120dB of dynamic range (a toddler's hand at that). Far from all convertors in present-day studio gear use these chips. Many use ADCs limited at 17-18b performance.

You seem to be focusing on the best case scenario. It may exist (would you care telling me which ADC you use, or provide me with a spectrum plot of you system's noise floor with shorted input?), but it is not quite typical for the general state of affairs, unless I'm grossly mistaken.



bring back dynamic range

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