Dithering ?

I am prepared for arguments, but I don't believe any human will hear the difference among those dithering options and I have seen some scholarly articles supporting this position.  I usually use Power 2 but only because I just did that once and never changed.

konradh
I am prepared for arguments, but I don't believe any human will hear the difference among those dithering options and I have seen some scholarly articles supporting this position.  I usually use Power 2 but only because I just did that once and never changed.

Not going to argue, but I did a classical project once where the harpsichordist thought there was something "wrong" with a track but couldn't put her finger on it. Turned out dithering had been turned off accidentally, which it hadn't been for the other tracks. When dithering was turned on, then to her it sounded "right."
 
So...if someone can hear the difference between dithered and non-dithered, they may be able to hear the difference between different types of dithering. Although in this case, it was more something she "sensed" than "heard." (And if there's a car going by outside, you're not going to hear any difference, no matter what!)

As the documentation says, the different dithering patterns have different levels of CPU usage.
These dithering patterns have been around a long time in the Sonar export feature.
I also think they go back to the days when CPU power was much inferior to the systems available today.
These days, why wouldn't you always use the Pow-r 3 dither pattern ? . . . unless your CPU wasn't up to it.
 

I might be doing it wrong, but I only dither with Ozone 5.

I dither in Ozone as well, but I have used PowR3 plenty of times.  I'm not going to pretend I can hear a difference, and it is probably true that you won't either.  My advice:  pick one and don't waste more time thinking about it.  If you want your recordings to be better, get better computer fans or room treatment or something.  Don't think about dithering.

Another good resource to check out is the educational guides on the iZotope website. Although some portions apply specifically to their products, they are written at a more universal level for the most part. There is a 38-page pdf on dithering in the "Ozone 6" section. (The top 3 listed pdf's are all worth a look).

Dither adds noise. The difference between dither algorithms is in the frequency distribution of that noise. The simplest methods (square, triangle) pretty much don't care how the noise is distributed, so they can skip the extra steps and run more efficiently. Proprietary algorithms (Pwr-X, MBIT+, UV-22) reduce noise frequencies that human ears are most sensitive to and move that energy up into the stratosphere where nobody cares.
 
In theory, that makes the more sophisticated algorithms more transparent. In practice, nobody can hear the difference. Sure, you can artificially create a scenario in which dither noise can be heard, but not in any real-world applications, where it's irrelevant.
 
For that matter, in most pop/rock recordings you could skip dither altogether and nobody would notice. I wouldn't do that in a harpsichord piece, especially with a golden-eared harpsichordist checking my work. But for a typical mix, even a dynamic one, few listeners would be able to distinguish between dithered vs. non-dithered version. Don't take my word for it - try it yourself.

thanks everyone ....

Geoff, What do you mean by stacking the dither over and over? I think of dither as the last step when exporting a finished product and going down to 16-bit for the purpose of making a CD.  I never dither if I am sending the product out for mastering.  Maybe I am missing something.  Thanks.

konradh
Geoff, What do you mean by stacking the dither over and over? I think of dither as the last step when exporting a finished product and going down to 16-bit for the purpose of making a CD.

There aren't any cases I can imagine where audio isn't passed around via a network. Imagine this use case.
1. User 1 plays guitar and sings and uses a ShoutCast stream to send the stream to his neighbor in another country (User 2). 
2. User 2 adds keyboards to the stream and forwards it to someone in another state (User 3).
3. User 3 adds drums to the mix and relays it to another stream with 100 real-time listeners.
 
Now you have a performance situation. The first musician cannot hear and react to what the second two musicians add to the mix, but he can get a bounce later to see how it came out.
 
The second musician can hear the first, but can't hear the drums since they haven't been added yet and he too would have to wait for a bounce to hear the final.
 
The third musician would actually hear the whole mix and stream it up to the wider audience.
 
In an internet chat room environment, like SecondLife or any other, a group of listeners could enjoy the performance and fairly real-time feedback. They would hear the performance within a second or two of it being played.
 
In this case, you have three stages at which dither may be required. User 1 would add dither before converting to a 192 bit stream (MP3 quality)  to go to User 2. User 2 converts the 192 bit stream to 24 bit audio, adds his part, converts back to 192 bit stream and sends to User 3.
 
Now you have three dithers stacked. In this case, the first two could be triangular and the last could be Pow-R3 shaped dither.
 
If each musician uses a shaped dither, the shaped dithers will compound. Since Shaped dithers often have frequency regions whether the dither is 3-4 times more than other regions, it could reach the audible range on a 192 bit MP3 quality stream if shaped dithers were stacked.
 
So, for this case, Users 1&2 would use triangular and user 3 Pow-R3.

Well, in any case, your listeners won't be able to tell the difference between POWR2 and POWR3, so I wouldn't worry about it.  Of course, some people wouldn't know if you recorded on a PortaStudio.
 
When in doubt, just ask yourself, What Would Kanye Do?

konradh
 
When in doubt, just ask yourself, What Would Kanye Do?

Hmmm...   Probably ask which dithering option Beyoncê prefers?
 

bitflipper:
 
A POEM BY THE MIGHTY KONRAD:
When problems overwhelm you
And you're troubled and confused
Just take a breath and ask yourself,
What Would Kanye Do?
You'll find the fog will clear away
Your heart will plainly see
You only needed four initials
Two Ws, K, and D
Oh, the pain that people feel!
The sorrows they go through!
When all they had to do was ask,
What Would Kanye Do?