POWr Dither - Where is it used in Sonar?

Hi all,
Thinking of upgrading from 8.5.3 Studio to X1 Producer. One of the benefits, apparently, is POWr dither.
Where specifically is it used in Sonar? I've read the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POW-R) so I know it's a good bit reduction algorithm (or algorithms), but I want to know, at what point will I make use of it in Sonar? Is it used when exporting WAV audio files for example?
Thanks!
[edit: title changed]

If you've been working at 24 bit audio, you'd export the mix at 24 bit with no dithering. That's assuming you're going to master the song, or have someone else master it.

If you want to put the song on a cd, it has to be converted to 16 bit. This is easily done inside Sonar, but you have to use one of the dithering algorithms. If you're thinking about getting the song mastered, or are going to have a go yourself, then you want to send off/ use the orignal 24 bit mix. The mastering engineer will then apply dithering just before burning the final product to a cd.

This is just a basic explanation.

So if you've recorded at 24 bit, you can't export a file as 16bit?
If I have Sonar Producer, could I just export the 24 bit file, load it into Producer and "power dither" it down to 16bit in Producer? 

Monkey23


So if you've recorded at 24 bit, you can't export a file as 16bit?
If I have Sonar Producer, could I just export the 24 bit file, load it into Producer and "power dither" it down to 16bit in Producer? 

Yes, you can export to 16-bit. You can export and do bit-depth conversion and sample rate conversion as well as dither all at the same time. There's no need to export first and then load it back in, etc.

Scott

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S.Wallis


If you've been working at 24 bit audio, you'd export the mix at 24 bit with no dithering. That's assuming you're going to master the song, or have someone else master it.

If you want to put the song on a cd, it has to be converted to 16 bit. This is easily done inside Sonar, but you have to use one of the dithering algorithms. If you're thinking about getting the song mastered, or are going to have a go yourself, then you want to send off/ use the orignal 24 bit mix. The mastering engineer will then apply dithering just before burning the final product to a cd.

This is just a basic explanation.

Why not keep it at 32 bit until the final word length reduction?
 
Yes, you record audio at 24 bit but Sonar processes this at 32 or 64 bit.  Any current mastering software accepts 32 bit files, so it makes sense to keep your stereo mix at that resolution until the final export.  Going back to 24 bit normally requires a non-noise-shaped dithering process.  Sure, you can skip dithering in this step, BUT you're introducing artifacts from truncation at that point.
 
My personal advice:
 
- Record at 24 bit.
- Render internally or Export to bring to a mastering program/engineer at 32 bit.
- Export to 16 bit as the last step using noise-shape dithering such as POWr-3 in Sonar.
 
 
Take care!
 
 

You got it.

Old thread question:  When exporting a 24bit project to audio and using the MP3 export (48k/16bit), Is the POWr profiles still used in the MP3 encoding or no?  You can still select a profile before the MP3 encoder box pops up  ; )

FWIW, I always do a 16 bit, dithered export and listen to it, just to make sure it's ok, and use that for MP3 conversion