I have a question about transcoding music.

[XacTactX]

So, I use Foobar2K for music files, and it is really handy because it has a frontend that you can use to keep your library of converters. That's what my question is about. I have Michael Jackson's Thriller (the Japanese pressing from 1982 that uses pre-emphasis, sounds fantastic), and I have found a plugin that will allow me to de-emphasize the album. So, I am going to transcode from FLAC -> FLAC while applying that Convolver plugin.

When I am in the FLAC transcoder's settings there is a drop-down box that says 'dither', and it lets me choose from 'always', 'only on lossy', and 'never'. Should I use dither? This is confusing because I know any decent music release uses dithering when they go from 24-bit master to the final RedBook 16-bit copy. So basically, should I apply dither again?

 

[dustNbone]

If it's already 16 bit, and your target is 16 bit also, there is no dithering to be done. Uncheck it to be sure I guess, but there's no reason it should do anything in this case.

 

[XacTactX]

Thank you, perfect answer to my question. That makes sense because the first wave of dithering will create a noise floor to get rid of the quantization error.