Weiss Enginering Ltd.
DAC501-4ch/DAC502-4ch
instead of distortion there is noise. The music is undistorted. The audio example at the link below is again
a 16 bit signal quantized to 8 bits, but with dither noise added. A much more pleasant experience. Notice
how the noise stays untouched by the music, i.e. there is no noise modulation.
•
https://www.weiss.ch/linked/digital-level-control/flatdither.mp3
Dithering does not stop there. More elaborate dithering schemes shape the noise such that it is mainly
present at higher frequencies where the human ear is less sensitive. This means that the audible noise
is much lower. The link below is again the 16 bit source quantized to 8 bits with noise-shaped dithering.
Probably hard to believe that this is only an 8 bit system! Note that the music is not distorted at all, despite
the 8 bit resolution.
Remember, a 16 bit system has 65,536 quantization steps while a 8 bit system has only 256 quantization
steps – a huge difference. And still, the properly dithered 8 bit system sounds great.
•
https://www.weiss.ch/linked/digital-level-control/shapeddither.mp3
This is what a properly dithered level control is capable to do. You have heard the 8 bit version, imagine
that with today’s 24 bit converters – no question that a level control with a 24 bit word-length easily rivals
the best analog level controls. By the way, 24 bits means 16,777,216 quantization steps.
The last example below toggles the noiseshaping dither on and off to give a good contrast between dither/no
dither versions.
•
https://www.weiss.ch/linked/digital-level-control/togglingdither.mp3
Dithering is used in many disciplines. Fig. 26 demonstrates dithering applied to quantized picture data.
Figure 26: Image processing: original (left), quantized without dithering (middle), quantized with dithering
(right)
4.6
The Weiss Dynamics Adaption
Nowadays we often have to face the issue that every piece of music can have it’s own loudness impression
- or it could be preferable to have less dynamics in the playback of a desired play list.
To make you able to control the dynamics of your music in such kind of circumstances we developed the
Dynamics Adaption plugin to overcome these problems. Shortly the aim of this algorithm is to avoid big
loudness changes or with other words make the user be able to reduce the dynamic range of the played
audio. Of course how invasive this controlling should be depends on the taste of the user - so we let you
decide by choosing the Dynamic Level.
In the following the algorithm, the parameter Dynamic Level and the recommended use of the Dynamics
Adaptions will be explained.
User Manual and
30
White Papers
