What is UltraDither and why should I care?

This is just one of the many advantages to using a single “super-computer” DSP chip. There is so much overhead on the UAD-1 that we are able to implement dithering at every step of signal processing without any impact on the plug-ins or host software. Like other DSPs, the UAD-1 uses high-resolution internal data values during its calculations. However, this data must be “bit-reduced” to match the resolution of the output signal.

Most general purpose DSP chips, like the Motorola 56K or Analog Devices SHARC employ simple rounding or truncation techniques, which have a noticeable impact on audio quality. Software developers who use these chips could apply valuable processor cycles to implement software dithering. However, most don’t because it will limit the number of instances and compromise the performance of the algorithm itself. When you see “high-resolution processing” specs, beware: it’s meaningless if dithering isn’t applied in the processing and to the output signal. The UAD-1 chip was designed with ultra-high quality audio processing in mind, hence the headroom for hardware dithering at every step of the process with no compromise to our software algorithms.

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