Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningquantizationcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to dither is quantization.
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In digital audio and other quantized signals, dither is a small, random noise signal added on purpose to the waveform just before it is rounded to a limited number of bits. Without it, the rounding error is correlated with the signal and shows up as harsh distortion and false harmonics; adding the noise turns that error into a steady, benign hiss instead, so quiet detail survives below the resolution of the system. Schuchman's 1964 Dither Signals and Their Effect on Quantization Noise gave the classic condition under which the added noise fully decorrelates the quantization error from the signal, and Lipshitz, Vanderkooy, and Wannamaker's 1992 Quantization and Dither: A Theoretical Survey laid out the audio theory in full. The referent here is a randomised value spread across samples in time, traded for a slightly raised noise floor, and it is not a spatial arrangement of pixels or a vibration fed into a mechanical valve.[1][2]
In computer graphics and printing, dithering approximates a colour or grey tone the device cannot show by scattering the few colours it does have across nearby pixels, so the eye blends them into the missing shade. The pattern can be a fixed matrix, as in ordered or Bayer dithering, or it can be computed by pushing each pixel's rounding error into its neighbours, as in Floyd and Steinberg's error-diffusion method. Ulichney's 1988 Dithering with blue noise reviewed these methods and argued for patterns whose structure is least visible to the eye. The referent is a spatial layout of a limited palette that fakes extra tones and is judged by how it looks, unrelated to a random noise added to an audio sample or a signal injected to free a sticking mechanism.[3]
In control engineering, dither is a small, fast oscillation deliberately injected into a servo, valve, or actuator so that a troublesome nonlinearity, above all the static friction, or stiction, that makes a part stick before it slips, is smoothed away. The rapid back-and-forth keeps the part in constant tiny motion, so it answers small commands instead of jamming, and the loop behaves as though the sharp nonlinearity had been replaced by a gentler averaged one. Zames and Shneydor's 1976 Dither in nonlinear systems gave the mathematical account of how a high-frequency dither linearises such a nonlinearity. The referent is a mechanical or electrical vibration chosen to overcome friction in a physical device, not a random noise added before digitising audio or a pattern of pixels standing in for missing colours.[4]
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