Re-Dithering??

An interesting feature from another DAW (Sampltude) is Smart Dithering.
Let’s suppose you have 16 bit / 44.1 files on a montage ready to burn and at the last minute your client changes his/her mind about a fade out.
Instead of applying dither to the whole montage because of that fade, it applies it only to the fade leaving the rest untouched.
This would be a really good feature in Wavelab.
Regards

An interesting feature from another DAW (Sampltude) is Smart Dithering.
Let’s suppose you have 16 bit / 44.1 files on a montage ready to burn and at the last minute your client changes his/her mind about a fade out.
Instead of applying dither to the whole montage because of that fade, it applies it only to the fade leaving the rest untouched.
This would be a really good feature in Wavelab.

You could already do it manually, by processing only the fade range.
But this example shows this is not a good idea to work on 16 bit files. If you want to work on individual files, do everything you need but keep them in 32 bit float un-dithered. And dither once at the end, before rendering/burning the montage.

Remember also that each intermediate dither adds a little noise (small though it is). Also that the “low noise” dithers so beloved for mastering are not recommended for anything other than a final dither (I won’t go into the reasons), and don’t reduce the noise of any earlier dithering.

As PG says, keep all your work as 32-bit files (24-bit dithered is virtually as good, I’d say), and make dithering and reduction to 16-bit format a single final step. If later revision is required, go back to the pre-dither state and complete the new work before doing another single final dither. Once you do that, you never have to worry about the niceties of dither again.

Paul

Working in 32 bit til the end is definitely a better workflow. Sometimes your’re working with mixed files from a client that has 4 tracks that are previously mastered and are 16/44, plus 6 more new ones that you’re working on.
Like PG says…that being the case you could process only the fade and add it to the montage…