Guides: Mastering & Dithering

[mthrfnk]

Recently noticed iZotope update their Mastering guide to a "2013" edition - it's a pretty good read and doesn't solely apply to using Ozone.
http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/iZo ... hOzone.pdf

Also noticed they have this dithering guide too:
http://izotope.fileburst.com/guides/Dit ... _Ozone.pdf

Enjoy

[blinx]

+1 for the post man, i like this tip

5. Monitor at around 85dB SPL (C-weighted). How loud is that?
Turn up your speakers until you can still have a conversation
with someone who is a meter away without having to strain
your voice. That’s just about right. When you listen at low to
medium volumes, you tend to hear more midrange (where the ear is most sensitive) and less of
the lows and highs. This is related to something called the Fletcher-Munson effect, which involves
how different frequencies are heard differently depending on the playback volume. So check
from time to time how it sounds at different volume levels.

Good stuff to refresh, and they give examples of effects/processing chains.

[Karoshi]

awesome thanks! looks like quite a good read

[Littlefoot]

I often think dither is used to try and make people who don't "get it" feel inadequate.

Dither is very simple in practical terms, if you are staying at the same Bit Depth when you export, dont do it. If you are going down to 16, do it. Pretty simple! People who discuss dither might want to spend that time thinking about those EQ and and compression settings one time more as it makes 100 times the difference to the quality of an outputted piece of audio. Yeah there are different noise shapings which in theory work better with different material, but I can't honestly say I've lost any sleep over it, I'm too busy making tracks sound good (hopefully...!)

[Sharmaji]

if you're making louder-than-shit EDM with an RMS of -5 (ie, everything on beatport), dither is useless.

[nowaysj]

Yes, the blood pooling up in your ear canals tends to mask the very subtle dithering artifacts at -85db.