When recording music with Pro Tools and Cakewalk or editing music with Cool Edit and Sound Forge, frequently, I see an option that allows me to adjust something called “Dither.”
Last night I decided to look up the word (after years encountering it in the above programs) and it turns out that “dither” did not arise from digital recording alone. It is true, as Wikipedia explains, that today it refers to:
an intentionally applied form of noise, used to randomize quantization error, thereby preventing large-scale patterns such as contouring that are more objectionable than uncorrelated noise. Dither is routinely used in processing of both digital audio and digital video data, and is often one of the last stages of audio production to compact disc.
But the word derives from the Middle English dideren meaning “To tremble, shiver, quake.” There’s even a MnE meaning for “dither” that is true to the ME meaning of the word:
NOUN: A state of indecisive agitation. INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: dith·ered, dith·er·ing, dith·ers
To be nervously irresolute in acting or doing.
Filed under: WOTD
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