Questions about bit depth and dither

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bitflipper
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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 13:50:03 (permalink)
Maybe you know of an alternative to HarBal 'Air' that could be used as a plugin on my Master bus, then I could just skip the HarBal.

I wish I did! Nothing I've tried really duplicates Har-Bal's "Air" effect. One possibility might be the BBE Sonic Maximizer, which to my ears seems to do something similar although it differs in that it affects low frequencies too. I'm guessing here because I've been reluctant to use it. Both mess with the phase and are potentially dangerous to mono compatibility.


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johnnyV
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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 14:04:03 (permalink)
Way back when the BBE  first came out it was explained that what it did was add distortion to ultra hi frequencies. This somehow tricked our ears into thinking it was crispier hi end. They have evolved since then ( 1983? ) and added "big bottom" around 1990 which is some kind of bass enhancement that was described as adding a lower harmonic content.

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#32
curb
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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 14:23:17 (permalink)
bitflipper



Have you noticed any oddities since changing to 24 bit (especialy interested in the Acer laptop, as that is what I use)? I upgraded to a Tascam 1800 recently, but at the same time I changed to 24-bit. When recording I get odd stutters, and a general lack of response/more audio drop-outs etc.

That's just due to more data being pushed back and forth. Twice as much, in fact. In terms of CPU burden, it's equivalent to switching from a 44.1KHz to an 88.2KHz sample rate. You'll probably need to raise your buffers a little to avoid those dropouts.
Factor in my leap from a 2-channel soundcard to recording 14 audio channels straight in, and I've increased the data handling by 24x.
 
I've been keeping my buffers low to feed the keyboards back to the monitor mixer, but if I monitor those direct then there's no reason why I can't raise them a little.

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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 14:28:40 (permalink)
johnnyV


Way back when the BBE  first came out it was explained that what it did was add distortion to ultra hi frequencies. This somehow tricked our ears into thinking it was crispier hi end. They have evolved since then ( 1983? ) and added "big bottom" around 1990 which is some kind of bass enhancement that was described as adding a lower harmonic content.


My understanding was that the bbe sonic maximiser was essentially a parallel compression box and that it basically mults the input, filters one part of the signal, so it's all top end, and compresses the snot out of it it then remixes this with the input to add 'top end excitement'.

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bitflipper
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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 15:30:41 (permalink)
As soon as I typed that reference to the BBE Sonic Maximizer I had second thoughts. I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

People have analyzed the SM to death, and there are detailed explanations on the web if you look. The two main patents (which apparently they bought from dbx) are public information. The bottom line is that there is no magic in there, it's mostly smoke 'n mirrors. But some people really like the results.


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bitflipper
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Re:Questions about bit depth and dither 2011/03/15 15:39:38 (permalink)
I should have also mentioned Ozone as a possible alternative to Har-Bal Air. Ozone has a useful harmonic exciter (although I liked it better in version 3 and still use the older version for that purpose), plus a stereo width enhancer, and the ability to delay multiple frequency bands by small amounts (like the BBE Sonic Maximizer does). However, though I have experimented with Ozone extensively I have never managed to quite duplicate the Har-Bal "Air" effect.


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