Question about rendering mixdowns

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-- Question about rendering mixdowns

Posted by evo8 on Jan-01-2007 15:11:

Question about rendering mixdowns

Currently i render my mixdown from Cubase as a 24 bit wav file, i then use Exact Audio Copy to convert this wav to mp3 via a LAME encoder...
Is this the right way to do it, should i render from Cubase as a 16 bit wav instead and then convert to mp3...i cant seem to get a NON joint stereo mp3 output from cubase so i just use EAC instead, just a bit confused as to what is the best way to do this
Thanks!

Posted by thoughtlessjex on Jan-01-2007 17:39:

If you only dither when compressing to mp3, your settings are fine. It's best to keep the highest quality until the very end, then compress for the sake of space.

Posted by evo8 on Jan-01-2007 19:09:

Hey, thanks for the reply, i take it then that the mp3 encoder is doing the dithering, or is this completely wrong?

Posted by thoughtlessjex on Jan-01-2007 19:51:

quote:
Originally posted by evo8
Hey, thanks for the reply, i take it then that the mp3 encoder is doing the dithering, or is this completely wrong?

I don't know. I've never used EAC, although I assume it would have the option of dithering.

Posted by DigiNut on Jan-01-2007 20:27:

You should render from Cubase as 16-bit using the UV22-HR dithering plugin on your final output. You'll lose some quality if you let LAME handle the dithering - actually, it won't dither at all, it will truncate.

FYI, for non-Cubase users reading this, there's no comparable plugin in FL or Reason or even Logic, so what you should do in that case is render as 32-bit, and use a dithering plugin offline like Waves IDR to make a 16-bit version before encoding to MP3.

Posted by evo8 on Jan-01-2007 22:39:

quote:
You'll lose some quality if you let LAME handle the dithering

yeah that was my fear, ill render from cubase as 16 bit from now on, cheers all!

Posted by DigiNut on Jan-02-2007 01:04:

quote:
Originally posted by evo8
yeah that was my fear, ill render from cubase as 16 bit from now on, cheers all!

Don't just bounce as 16-bit otherwise you'll get the same truncation problem. You have to render with the UV22 plugin, or else bounce as 32-bit and dither it in a wave editor.