MAAT LINpro
Dither Plugin
Your Sound, Your Way
Sharing the same user interface, MAAT's two-channel and multichannel LIN family are your final link between production and delivery.
Offering optional word length reduction and seven noise shaping spectra tailored to both analog and digital delivery of assets, LIN is highly adjustable to help create your own signature "sound".
In addition to TPD and weighted TPD, LINpro and LINSurround feature four newly developed fifth, eighth and ninth order psychoacoustic noise shaping choices.
As with all dithering mechanisms, LIN must be the very last plug–in instance, just prior to converting to the final, fixed–point format.
LINpro and LINSurround incorporate the latest advances in auditory and psychoacoustic research.
Older, outdated dithering engines rely on decades–old approaches to the problem.
MAAT evaluated their original LINearise engine and realized that they could do it even better, implementing a more accurate, mathematically superior approach plus new thinking on both the User Experience (UX) and how you want your master to sound.
Whether you're delivering a 16-bit Red Book dupe master, a 24-bit "high res" 88.2k file to today's higher fidelity streaming services, or multichannel 48k stems for video and motion picture surround work, the LIN family will take you there with the best sounding tracks obtainable.
Eyes On It
LINpro and LINSurround bring visual certainty to the arcane art of dithering.
Real world plots of each noise shape are included for your viewing pleasure.
These are not MATLAB simulations, they are actual plots generated by LINpro's optimized dither engine.
Notice that the -100dBFS input signal, that spike at the left side of the plot, is preserved even though the word length has been reduced to 16 bits.
A 16–bit word can only encode or store 96dB of dynamic range. Any information quieter than -96dBFS should be lost when reducing the word length to 16 bits.
With LIN, up to the 19th bit of the input signal is preserved, embedded in the resulting 16–bit word.
Dither is a fundamental aspect of today's DAWs.
Although not usually thought of as such, re-dithering is important DSP (Digital Signal Processing). In the distant past, much of the pioneering research on dither was performed at Bell Labs.
According to information theory, you should add a pinch of noise to your digital audio every time you alter it to keep it distortion-free and to preserve program content by embedding it in the noise floor.
That's dither, use it to make your digital audio less..."digital".
System Requirements
- MacOS 10.9 Mavericks and above
- Windows 7 and above (32 and 64-bit)
- Intel, AMD, or Apple Silicon CPU
Plugin Formats
AAX Native, AU, VST2, and VST3