Which pow-r dither 1 2 or 3?

My opinions ... it Soooooooooooooooo doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Use 2 I'd say. the truth is, you can't hear the dither or the effects of the dither period in any "normal" listening environment, much less the subtle difference between them ... but of course ... just IMHO .....

its hard to explain the difference among them. you can understand like this.
pwr1 just like to play a singal note c (tone), pwr2 like to play a chord c e g. and pwr3 like  c e g b, or g b d f. due to C7, harmonics charmingly appeal to us. thats why pwr3 is the most complex.
 as Matson said, pwr2 may be generally used. because Cmaj good sound.
whereas pwr1 is the fast operation.
 

IIRC there is also a wikipedia article about the Pow-r algorithms, if you want to know how they differ and what their creators had in mind for each one. Basically, they are just three different spectral distribution curves for the shaped dither noise.

I think if you took a poll, you'd find most users use Pow-r 3. But I suspect that's only because "3" sounds like it should be better than "1", because it's very, very hard to hear the difference in music. For that matter, it's very, very hard to distinguish these from any other proprietary dither algorithm - at the end of the day dither really doesn't matter much.

3 is definitely better because it's the biggest number. That is my logic.

It's 3x better than 1 and a good 150% better than 2.

Hmmm... I think 1.5x "as good" is only 50% "better". 

smallstonefan


I did a listening test once and THOUGHT 2 sounded better with my music. I've used it ever since. It may not be any better, but having done the "test", I am able to sleep at night without wondering - it's another thing off my checklist! :)

It's your music but I wouldn't ruin my mixes with 2.
1 or 3.

-Panu

POW-r 3 is supposed to be the most transparent of all, at least according to the Sonar Help files.

I never could hear a difference between any of the dithering options in Sonar. I did hear a difference though when I tried out Ozone's dithering. At first I thought I was using it wrong and there was no dithering being applied at all and I was listening to my original master.

Maybe it was in my head because I was tinkering with a new gadget. You know how that can be.

:)

I have to laugh! None of you can hear ANY difference between any of the algorithms, or in fact dithered vs not at all I would bet!

BTW - I do dither, as it is a TECHNICALLY correct thing to do and has no cost .... but let's not any of us pretend we can hear it!

Sijel


I think most people can hear the difference of Dither/No-Dither in the long reverb tail at the end of the song (unless their studio is mucked up).
 

Not unless they crank the VERY end of it up 30+ dB - you can't hear it at a normal volume level - even a "loud" one like 90dB SPL in even a "quiet" studio room (30-40 dB noise floor)

FWIW: I always use Powr3 if I'm not going to use Powr1, Powr2 or one of the other dithering algoritms.

Well put, Sijel!

In light of all this, you might be amused to read Apogee's sales pitch for their proprietary dither algorithm, UV22. And we all know Apogee is never prone to hyperbole!

UV22 was surveyed to be employed on 8 out of 10 hit CD releases by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Donald Fagen, to name a few.

Hey, if you can't make a convincing technological argument, you can always name-drop!

BTW, they even claim that it "offers extend (sic) resolution and intelligibility in low bitrate Codec applications, from 16 kbps upwards". If you're encoding your MP3s at 16kb/s, dither is the least of your worries.

Reader1 ya kiddy on china man, **** off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't listen to this guy Rick, I suspect this guy is the knda guy who likes to try and strike up friendships with 13 year old kids, on line, pretending he's that age too

Apogee UV22HR is the best. Look the name-dropping list Bitflipper was talking about:


Beck
Brooks and Dunn
Eric Clapton
Steve Winwood
Nine Inch Nails
The Rolling Stones
Mariah Carey
Frank Sinatra
Saturday Night Fever- Mobile Fidelity Reissue
Elton John
Bruce Springsteen
Alison Krauss and Robert Plant
Foo Fighters
London Philharmonic Orchestra
No Doubt
Sheryl Crow
The Mastering Lab
Gateway Mastering
Masterfonics
Future Disc

Abbey Road Studios
MCA Records
Precision Mastering
Warner Brothers Records
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
Capitol Records
Telarc Records
Polygram Records
Studio Reference
Soundmirror
Sterling Sound
Stephen Marcussen Mastering
Gavin Lurssen Mastering
Rocket Labs
Mark Levinson
Grado Labs
Masterdisk Mastering
Sony Music
and many, many more...

Where is the Pow-r 3 name-dropping list?

Yes they did!  It's called "vinyl"! 
Although you will probably point that the noise introduced there could be, in fact,"coherent" since it's rotationally based.

Who's Kesha?