No more dithering! Converting tracks in itunes

Mixing and Mastering
1

So I was going from 48k 24bit to 44k 16-bit dithering and I would lose .2 lufs of level no matter what and which way I went about it, I only pulled out the analyzer because I could here my track from contending with my reference tracks to just missing the mark after dither, when mixing and mastering for people before we noticed the slight/smidget of level loss but didn’t really care as it was almost non-existant but def noticeable and they weren’t my personal tracks so as long as they didn’t care whatever

But all my personal tracks I’ve been working on are at 48k 24 bit and im getting ready to release some stuff and will not compromise for the .2 lufs drop or anything other than what I’m hearing at 48k 24 bit and I came across this article from tune core

It works PERFECTLY! Not sure if it’s dithering when converting but it takes my 48k 24-bit file and makes and identical copy at 44k 16-bit with absolutely no level loss or noticeable difference, exactly the same in the analyze, I hear no quantization distortion I mean it’s exactly the same

So down to my question, has anyone here else here used this method to get tracks to 44k 16bit?

2

What were you using to dither/SRC?

If it works and sounds good then great! However, from past use of Apple’s encoders, I thought they sounded poor compared to others.

3

I was using the dithering in Ableton or in pro l2 and have tried all the different settings, from 16-bit triangular/powr-1/powr-2/powr-3/rectangular in Ableton, to 16-bit basic/weighted/optimized in Pro-L2, all of them caused slight level loss, literally almost none existant, like .2 lufs but really noticeable to me

4

I could possibly be alone here lol, but I don’t care for Pro-L as a mastering limiter. I prefer the Izotope Maximizer. Much cleaner and more transparent. I wouldn’t be surprised if the problems you’ve encountered have something to do with Pro-L. I haven’t had the same issues myself. I’ve been mastering for years and I’ve never encountered a loss due to dithering. I’ll pay close attention next session just for the sake of it but maybe have a go with other limiters. Also I almost always use two limiters, the first applying just 1 db of gain reduction to catch the peaks, and the second doing the heavy work.

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I used izotope maximizer for years, it is nowhere near as clean and transparent as Pro-L2 in my opinion, I I didn’t like Pro-L1 as much and would use Maximizer but when pro-l2 came out it definitely gave me better results than maximizer

Actually I would always dither via export in Ableton, I only tried to see what kind of results I got using pro-l2 for dithering because I could not deal with the .2 lufs level loss, and whether Ableton or pro-l2 it seemed I would always lose .2 lufs until I converted the 48k 24 bit file in iTunes no loss whatsoever ever

And I’m actually using izotope inzight to analyze the files

Try and compare one of your high sample rate bit rate files dithered and one not dithered and put it in inzight and see if there’s a difference, mine always has a slight level loss at .2 lufs on the dithred file

I’ve messed around with double limiting but tend to use one limiter as it’s given me the best results, but I also use the pro-c2 with parrelel compression right after subtle g-bus compression, and I guess using pro-c2 with parallel compression as in one of danny’s Videos could be considered limiting as the wet ratio is set to 10:1

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Yes, Maximizer is still my go to limiter, I think it sounds the best as well.

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7

all this maximizer talk has got me wanting to break it out in one of my latest arrangements/mix-downs/final mastering chain

what I noticed is I could not keep things as stable at a certain point with maximizer as I could with Pro-l2 at 16x over sampling, but maybe I’ll try revisiting it and seeing what it has to offer as I haven’t used it since last summer I believe, and I’ve gotten much better at mixing/mastering since then

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8

Let me know your thoughts after trying Maximizer again.

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will do, ill also check in at the 32x oversampling thread after I giving the A B’ing you suggested a go, so busy during the week that I don’t get enough time to sit and work on music, thanks

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Maximizer wins hands down after all my tests haha thanks for getting me in the mind set to use it again, I feel stupid for not factoring in how much I’ve grown since the last time I used it which was last summer when my mix-downs were nowhere near to where they are now, and always associated it with those mix-down, and just when I started making big breakthroughs I switched to pro-l2, and was also mesmerized by the oversampling and having a computer that could handle it.

But after doing some tests Maximizer is giving me much better results, thanks again to the both of you!

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11

Maximizer is mine too. I love Pro-L2 and use it on things like Kicks etc from time to time. But to me this limiter can’t handle pushing it too hard before it breaks down. I can really push Maximizer if I want but as you say if I need that much I would go to serial limiting and other means.