> A high noise floor is not even close to being the same as dither, never mind noise shaping.
Dither is noise. Well chosen noise, very quiet noise, but noise nonetheless. Whether the signal is noisy for one reason or another, the consequences at the point of decimation/quantization are the same. Either way the least significant bits are filled with stochastic values and the desired signal isn't plagued with quantization noise artifacts.
> Have you actually heard the difference between simple dither, noise-shaped dither, and non-dithered 16-bit audio? A test tone is the worst possible way to hear what they do.
...is the sort of thing someone who hasn't done a blinded listening test would say. Stop assuming the commercially successful "experts" are also technical experts, because few are. I doubt more than a tiny fraction could describe what a least significant digit is.
(Cutting vinyl, a hilariously lossy process that requires compression and EQ to avoid the needle jumping the groove, doesn't need a 24 bit master. Barely needs a 14 bit master. But since an extra hundred megabytes of really accurate noise floor doesn't make anything worse, they do it anyway.)
Dither is noise. Well chosen noise, very quiet noise, but noise nonetheless. Whether the signal is noisy for one reason or another, the consequences at the point of decimation/quantization are the same. Either way the least significant bits are filled with stochastic values and the desired signal isn't plagued with quantization noise artifacts.
> Have you actually heard the difference between simple dither, noise-shaped dither, and non-dithered 16-bit audio? A test tone is the worst possible way to hear what they do.
...is the sort of thing someone who hasn't done a blinded listening test would say. Stop assuming the commercially successful "experts" are also technical experts, because few are. I doubt more than a tiny fraction could describe what a least significant digit is.
(Cutting vinyl, a hilariously lossy process that requires compression and EQ to avoid the needle jumping the groove, doesn't need a 24 bit master. Barely needs a 14 bit master. But since an extra hundred megabytes of really accurate noise floor doesn't make anything worse, they do it anyway.)