Ditherbox
TL;DW: Ditherbox is a switchable selection of dithers in 16 and 24 bit, plus monitoring tools.
This one’s fairly simple to explain. It’s (nearly) every Airwindows dither plugin in one box, with a control to select between them.
Well, there’s a bit more: Ditherbox comes with 16 bit versions built in (the individual plugins are based on 24 bit, with the exception of NotJustAnotherCD). So rather than messing around with BitShiftGain (which will still give you any weird bit depth you could wish for) you can output to CD-quality 16 bit directly from Ditherbox. That was kind of waiting for Ditherbox to come out, didn’t want to steal all of its thunder.
Oh, did I say thunder? Ditherbox also comes with monitoring tools: calibrated SlewOnly and SubsOnly playback, where it’s supposed to give you roughly the same levels and dynamics from full bandwidth, SlewOnly and SubsOnly. Might not be exactly the same, but if one of them is wildly different from the full bandwidth you might have a look at the mix.
Lastly, it has a new trick: Silhouette! The idea behind this one is simple: calibrated noise replaces your mix. If you can still hear beats and dynamic behavior, or best of all if your music is kind of recognizable, it’s a good sign! That means your mix is communicating information dynamically. If it’s just a wash, you might want to look at your overcompression or over-limiting, because especially now in the days of replay gain, it’s good to leave the ability to communicate with dynamics and not squish everything too much. It’ll also tell you things about how spikey your compression peaks are, and the dynamic texture of your drum impacts.
This plugin marks the open-sourcing of everything I’ve ever done dither-wise, including the Benford Realness-based Not Just Another Dither (named by the internet!). Seemed sensible, as they are all included in Ditherbox (well… actually the TPDF-based stuff like TapeDither, NodeDither, PaulDither, DoublePaul didn’t get included as they weren’t in the original Ditherbox. I’m kind of exhausted doing this one and VSTing it and opensourcing everything: there was a lot of fussy porting work and barely room to move the slider on the VST: forgive, plz?)
Anyhow, with MOST of the Airwindows dither work represented, hopefully this is fun to fool with. I do still recommend Not Just Another Dither on general principles, as in practical terms it’s the best one. You can still put TapeDither on outputs going to a mix, I’m just saying, it all culminated in NJAD.
This is all supported by Patreon. I am rekt, heading to bed now. Goodnight :)
ATTENTION SIR CHRIS! IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ THIS ASAP! The Steinberg VST2 plugin format will become obsolete and unsupported October 1st 2018! You must send the VST2 License Agreement form filled and signed to Steinberg before October 1st 2018 and they will send it back to You checked and signed, or You will not be able to legally make VST2 plugins anymore!! Direct linking does not work here, so please go to KVR Audio Forum and JUCE Forum and Steinberg Developer Forum for info about this!! The VST2 License Agreement form should be included in the latest VST3 (3.6.10) SDK (in the VST2 folder) available on Github!! Act quickly and HURRY UP!! Good luck!!
Please respond Sir Chris, if You are aware of this or not and act quickly if You did not know about this!! Hurry up!!
I am not selling VST2s. I’ve not sold a single one, and you are quite mistaken if you think I won’t be able to make VST2 plugins.
Also, I’m not a knight: I’m ‘Chris’.
I apologize Chris, I meant no harm, I just wanted to help. Do You know about the VST 2 License Agreement and Steinberg shutting down VST 2? The word on the developer forums is that if someone does not send a filled and signed VST2 License Agreement form to Steinberg before October 1st 2018, then that person or his/her company will not be able to make or distribute plugins, free or commercial, anymore (at least not legally). I just wanted to give You a heads up, because it would be terrible if Steinberg would be after You or force You to stop making VST2 plugins after October 1st 2018, that is all, my apologies, I meant no harm. <=)
Oops, I meant to write that it would be terrible if Steinberg would force You to stop distributing and take down Your awesome VST2 plugins after October 1st 2018.
the NJAD setting on this plug is using 20% more CPU for me than the standalone NJAD
same with Natural in both 16 and 24bit settings. the rest of the settings are using the usual near-nothing.
(Im in Ableton btw)
[…] http://www.maominge.tw/ditherbox-vst/ […]
[…] Kvantiseringsfel (truncation error). Jag vet inte om kvantiseringsfel ?r en bra ?vers?ttning till Svenska men det handlar om n?r man g?r fr?n t ex el 32 eller 24 bitars ljud ned till ett l?gre bitdjup (ofta 16bitar). Av n?gon anledning s? har jag haft ett flertal projekt d?r enskilda instrument i mixar har lidit av kvantiseringsdistorsion. Oftast har det handlat om akustiskt samplade instrument s? jag misst?nker att n?gon ny instrumentplugin som hanterar stora samplade instrument som konsertflyglar el dyl saknar dither eller n?gon hypad ljudkreat?r har sl?ppt ett nytt samplingsbibliotek som sedan anv?nds utan dither. Detta var helt nytt f?r 2018, i vilket fall f?r mig… Tips: Lyssna noga p? dina samplade instrument, speciellt d? de klingar ut, d?r h?rs det tydligast (det ?r inte vackert). Om det l?ter konstigt, testa att l?gga en dither-plugin sist i kedjan p? ber?rd kanal f?r att se om det blir b?ttre. Airwindows har en gratis plugin som heter Ditherbox. http://www.maominge.tw/ditherbox-vst/ […]
Hello! Im not pro in audio production. Can’t understand about ditherbox vst2 64, Is it free or not? Can i use it in my projects? Where is the license
Hello Chris,
Thank you for all your work and helpful plugins.
I was wondering if standalone TPDF plugin should yield the same result as choosing TPDF option in ditherbox. I was comparing them, dithering into 24bit, and ditherbox sound a tad ‘brighter’. The noise spectrum of both look the same though. Maybe a noise shaping was added? Maybe a slight different cpu optimization? Other explanation?
It’s MIT licensed open source and free to use. Patreon is for if you want me to do more :)
It’s the same code, and listening tests on 24 bit dithers are REAL subjective. You can pick whichever you like best: any other sound anywhere near you will affect the result more.
Hello, Chris,
I was recently doing some listening tests with your collection of dithers, sometimes amplifying them to ridiculous levels like you do in your videos, and I think there’s a problem with the implementation of NotJustAnotherDither within Ditherbox: it sounds like truncation, and nothing at all like the standalone version. Might I have caught a bug or is it just my mind playing tricks?
Thanks for your work.
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