Mozzaik Dither-best one ever?

Can’t say I’ve ever heard dither…

truncation distortion correlated to the audio results in a loss of immediacy or depth ime. correctly dithering de-correlates it from the audio preserving the depth and immediacy.

I've saw this thread that viciousbliss started so I decided to put some thoughts. I like the sound of classical CDs recorded in 80s. I know that they used old equipment and measurements are not good as in modern electronics. Still I get amazed every time when I play these recordings on audio shows. I wanted to get that sound signature when listen to modern CDs. After more that 100 versions and one year of development and testing we came with this dither that has qualities that I like. That doesn't mean that other stuff is not good. I'm sure they are great. It is matter of preference and taste.

A while back I listened to the examples over on the forum thread at that purple site, and although I'm a far cry away from having golden ears the difference was pretty evident to me.

I asked about it over at the purple site and it does sound like it's subscription only unfortunately. Although I'm not in a position to justify a subscription, it does sound quite delightful and people who do this for a living might want to at least check it out.

3 guarantees in life: 

1)Death
2)Taxes
3)Dan having an opinion

It's good that we investigate everything. As I understand it, this Mozzaik dither is a work in progress, so feedback here should be very useful. In comparing this with Good Dither last night, the Mozzaik can radically change the sound signature. Good Dither is pretty neutral, doesn't have an immediate wow factor or anything. What I'm finding now is that it gives me a lot more flexibility to adjust hardware and plugin settings. I was mainly using Maat Linpro for a while, and I don't recall being able to get away with cranking some things as much as I did last night with Good Dither on.

thank you for joining RGO and sharing your ideas. I will try this dither, at least a free trial. I’m not a fan of subscription of course, but at least the price is less than 2 fast food meals where I live. I figure.. If it’s worth $27/yr just for some noise, then it’s SUPER worth the price. I am doubtful… but heh, I get it. When it comes to dither, it’s a strange topic. The first dither I knew about was Apogee UV22(I think in 2001–needed a pci card I think). I asked what makes it special, and I was told it’s like listening to Coca-Cola. It’s that sort of recognition. Well.. here we are and I’m not sure anyone is UV-22ing these days. Maybe that’s where I went wrong? 🤔




I looked up that release. I’ve been listening to classical lately, not sure what’s wrong(right) with me. I will try to find the CD. Thank you! 😊

Ok..

I listened to these examples and think I can hear what dither is doing

But I haven’t downloaded Mozzaik and tested on my own yet.

Well.. first I noticed, the CD doesn’t sound great. Pretty mucked up. Probably cheap disk making these days.

Next I noticed the HiRes sounds absolutely incredible. Piano and Rhodes(?) really sound great, cymbals full of air. So sad that the world refuses to admit higher res isn’t placebo. And make fun of bat ears etc when you try to mention it. What can you do.

TPDF - I feel dynamics of the highs are similar to high res, so that’s nice. However the lows seem like they build up and push forward in a somewhat mucky way. Versus the HiRes it’s a little disappointing..

Mozzaik - I feel like the lows don’t get as mucked up as TPDF. So that is something welcome. The highs are less bright to me, less shine. So kind of opposite TPDF.

I hope to do some tests soon


My take away so far -
I deal with this kind of frustration when I try to master things myself.. and now I guess I have to watch that Down sampling actually can and does screw up a great thing

I downloaded the wavs and realized they aren’t wavs, they are FLAC

“FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.”

Just like the money refuses to allow the public to consider some CD manufacturing sounds better.. they refuse to let us believe that FLAC isn’t 1:1 with wav. The reason is money. The amount of savings in storage savings is in the millions, maybe billions. Bandwidth savings is definitely billions. I’ve never heard FLAC match up to wav. This HiRes example is the best I’ve heard, but I bet a wav would be even better..

I did some tests in Reaper down sampling to WAV 1644, no dither and it was great. I then used Reaper’s built in dither, it would be hard to hear a difference.

But yes.. we DO deal with compression. I use Google drive too much and it butchers the wav or even 320kbps MP3 and streams it in some undeclared compression. Life sucks. Then again free is nice ☺️.

So this isn’t really a good test, it’s compressed.

reaper’s dither on the render page is inadequate. It is only 1.5 bits instead of the correct two bits. Insert good dither with the maximum level of flat dither. I also use Oxford limiter and psp xenon for dither and control of overs over 0 when monitoring sometimes.

This place makes very good CDs these days by the way.. (no affiliation)

www.groovehouse.com/why_use

FYI- Amazon is a terrible place to buy CDs. In the late 2000’s they spent 30-100 million to make all CD/DVD’s on demand .. they have their own crappy CD burning service and make them only when you order, total cheapest quality. The top labels got on board and I doubt they’ve changed at all