Audio processing in sequencing software is often done at very high bit rates to provide sufficient resolution for the plug-ins to do their work, but how is this then translated to a 16-bit CD compatible file? Rather than just ‘truncate’ the 24-bit or even higher resolution audio to 16 bits, and so lose all the extra audio quality, a technique known as ‘dithering’ is used which adds low level noise to the signal to (seemingly paradoxically) enable the preservation of as much of the original resolution’s detail when ‘bouncing’ the mix to a finished stereo audio file. Both Steinberg and Apple provide plug-ins that can be applied across the mix fader which make use of established industry standard dithering algorithms like Apogee’s UV22 and that of the POW-R Consortium (short for Psychoacoustically Optimized Word Reduction).
