Ozone 4 - Watch your dither...

Back in August I was having issues with my 'mastered' mix sounding muffled. The link below is that thread and has some good content on the possible causes/fixes.

Muffled Mumbled Mess

Soon after getting Ozone 4 I started noticing similar results. Without all the gory details... making a very long story short... I'm sure you'll appreciate...

If you use the presets in O4, look closely at the descriptive text about the preset (bottom area of window). The preset "CD Master" states that when exporting host dithering should be disabled as the preset has dither enabled. Setting dither to -none- when exporting using the aforementioned preset will 'greatly' improve the sound quality! @_@

Just an FYI you may or may not be aware of...

signed,
NoobsRUs

I'm sorry Philip, yes that is exporting 44/16 for cd otherwise it is zip for dither. I wish I could say I know all about this phenom, but that just isn't the case. With my background in electronics I fully understand the concept of bias aka digital dither, but its proper application will probably remain a mystery long into my hopefully storied recording career. :) I certainly don't mean to imply that I can hear the noise either. My black lab might since she often howls when I'm recording, but I think that is from another situation. ^_^  I've struggled with this 'muffled' issue for some time and had some good advice from some good sources. Being new to the art of digital recording... I've had lots of fun learning with the Record-Rinse-Repeat method. (I have patches of hair missing and my mustachio curls funny on one end) Most of it has been from my tendency to stomp around with both feet before paying attention, ala reading a simple descriptive text meant to inform the user, and said user ass\u\ming he's God's gift to the DAW. I can say with the certainty of my ears though... too much dither in a mix is like putting sugar in coffee... makes ya wanna run for the outhouse.

Thanks too for point out the proper time(s) to use dither.