[sdiy] 12 bit quantization noise, dithering, synths

[Gordonjcp]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 10:34:23PM -0800, brianw wrote:
> The first time I moved from "audiophile" digital audio to video game audio - writing a digital mixer to combine multiple sounds effects in a game - I quickly ran into challenges with the signal-to-noise ratio. Strictly done, an 8-channel digital mixer would only allow 5 bits per input channel to avoid clipping. Not only that, but you can barely hear the game audio when a single channel is present. So, I walked to the office of one of the video game experts, and asked how they managed to get decent quality out of a mere 8-bit DAC. The answer? Don't allow any headroom! Run all samples at full volume! They'll rarely correlate enough to clip, and even if they do clip, that will be better than not being able to hear the samples, not to mention losing the input sample details to further quantization.

... and a soft-clip function becomes just a lookup in a 256-byte table, which depending on how you apply it can make things a bit less brutal.

-- 
Gordonjcp