UV-22

A process developed and patented by Apogee Electronics for maximizing the dynamic range of digital audio. UV-22 is sometimes referred to as a dithering or bit-mapping scheme. While it is very similar to these conceptually, it is a unique process. UV-22 encoding adds an inaudible, high-frequency ‘bias‘ to the digital bit stream, placing an algorithmically-generated ‘clump’ of energy around 22kHz. Much as the bias on an analog tape recorder smoothes out magnetic tape recording non-linearity, UV-22 silently captures resolution up to and even beyond 20 bits on standard, 16-bit digital audio. Many pros use UV-22 upon final mixing to a 16-bit format for CD release.