FabFilter User Forum
Dither before SRC in Reaper
I have a question on the order of dither and SRC.
My original Reaper project is all in 48KHz as was used for both video and audio, audio is output uncompressed at 16bit/44.1KHz. Reaper's final SRC to 44.1KHz is AFTER Pro L2 in it's render process, so dither would happen BEFORE SRC.
My question is, would this mess up the dither? Dither is obviously used when reducing bit depth (e.g. 16bit) but is it sample rate dependent too?
Simon — Sep 17, 2020
Hi Simon,
Dither can be applied to mask noise when you are decreasing your bit depth. Decreasing the bit depth is done by the truncating of the least significant bit, and this can generate some unwanted quantization distortion.
Since just changing the sample rate does not change anything in the bit structure, there will be no quantization distortion. Adding dither will have nothing to mask and will only increase the noise floor of your material, albeit slightly.
Cheers,