Except when offline bouncing?

From what I understand the ONLY time you should apply dithering is if you are bouncing/mixing down from a higher bit depth (like 24bits) to a lower bit depth (like 16bits). It is best to avoid dithering down like that until the very final mix.

Beepster
From what I understand the ONLY time you should apply dithering is if you are bouncing/mixing down from a higher bit depth (like 24bits) to a lower bit depth (like 16bits). It is best to avoid dithering down like that until the very final mix.

I read a Cakewalk tutorial lesson once that suggested turning dithering off during normal recording/playback. As you posted, it only needs to be used when down-changing bit depths. Why it is enabled by default is probably because Cakewalk figures it can't hurt anything if not needed and most people would not think to enable it when exporting.

BeepsterFrom what I understand the ONLY time you should apply dithering is if you are bouncing/mixing down from a higher bit depth (like 24bits) to a lower bit depth (like 16bits). It is best to avoid dithering down like that until the very final mix.

 
 
So are you meaning that Sonar would never dither when just online realtime playing back?

parco

BeepsterFrom what I understand the ONLY time you should apply dithering is if you are bouncing/mixing down from a higher bit depth (like 24bits) to a lower bit depth (like 16bits). It is best to avoid dithering down like that until the very final mix.

 
 
So are you meaning that Sonar would never dither when just online realtime playing back?

What are you trying to do? Are you using mismatched samples or audio clips? Usually you want to keep all your audio at the same bit depths and samplerates while working. Sonar will try to match bit depth and samplerates if you import something that doesn't match the project settings but that should probably be avoided. I guess I'm not really sure I understand the question here. More details as to want you want to do would help.

Afaik I only actually use dither when I export a project as audio and want to save it as 16 bit instead of the 24 bit I work with: the preference you can set is just the default you will see when exporting. If you don't change the preference you might forget to choose the best setting while exporting to another bit depth. So setting the preference is a set and forget option for exporting. Afaik that's it...

There is actually more to the various dither settings, but generally in the real world none of it is ever audible, so it doesn't really matter.
 
For instance if you are using an external insert, freezing tracks or running plugins at a lower bit depth than the audio engine, dither may be applied automatically.

drewfx1
There is actually more to the various dither settings, but generally in the real world none of it is ever audible, so it doesn't really matter. For instance if you are using an external insert, freezing tracks or running plugins at a lower bit depth than the audio engine, dither may be applied automatically.

Correct. There are other reasons to have dither on besides going from higher to lower bit depth.

Nonono.........
O.Kay. Simply I just meaned Would any ditherings be auto-added into the final mixed online realtime playback outputs simultaneously to the DAC or speakers from Sonar x2 itself when I've just click this "Play" button to play immediately which other than offline bouncing to an audio file, and dithering is set inside Preferences dialog?
 

Grem

drewfx1
There is actually more to the various dither settings, but generally in the real world none of it is ever audible, so it doesn't really matter. For instance if you are using an external insert, freezing tracks or running plugins at a lower bit depth than the audio engine, dither may be applied automatically.

Correct. There are other reasons to have dither on besides going from higher to lower bit depth.

what other reasons might there be? I've only ever used it in the context of reducing bit depth