[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

It costs nothing to properly dither the signal. Therefore, there's no reason
not to do it.

If dithering makes no difference in the final result, then there is no reason
to waste time or energy to do it, however small the required time or energy
might be (it is never zero). However ... if it makes no difference in the
final result, there's no harm in doing it, either.

The reason that an undithered signal /doesn't/ sound awful, is that musical
tones are rarely at (or close-enough to) sub-multiples of the sampling
frequency, and/or don't last long enough, for correlated quantization error
to be audible.

I've listened to Ethan's test files, and I hear no difference. If I hear no
difference, there isn't any, or at least none that is worth worrying about,
provided that the recording is intended to be heard (and not analyzed by a
computer or something).

To hear what this error sounds like, listen to a test CD with an undithered
sweep tone. (I think the Denons are undithered, but I don't remember.)

I don't have one. But if a sweep tone is required to hear the difference, then
it doesn't matter, because none of my recording projects involve sweep tones.