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Convention Paper

A Listening Test of Dither in Digital Audio Systems

Authors: Kvist, Preben; Poulsen, Torben; Rasmussen, Karsten Bo

AES Convention 118 · Paper 6328 · May 2005

Abstract

This paper investigates the subjective effects of the use of dither in digital audio systems. A short introduction to dithered and undithered quantization is given, and the subjective experiment is described. The results of listening tests on undithered, subtractive dithered and non-subtractive dithered quantization are presented. The listening tests were made with 4 to 12 bits/sample. The subjective tests show that subtractive dithering is preferred to undithered quantization up to 8 bits/sample. Nonsubtractive dithering was, with music stimuli, only preferred to undithered quantization at 4 bits/sample. With speech, nonsubtractive dither was preferred to undithered quantization up to 8 bits/sample. Triangular probability density function dither was only preferred to rectangular probability density function dither at very low bit rates.

Details

Published in
AES Convention 118
AES Convention
118
Paper number
6328
Publication date
May 6, 2005
Session subject
Signal Processing
Affiliation
DELTA; Oticon; Technical University of Denmark (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Convention Paper