i read an interview online with an Abbey Road mastering engineer and he stated that he always with no exception masters at -0.3 to prevent clipping later on. no idea if he was talking about radio or "website" media player compression?

 

I think he actually means devices who don't quite live up to the standard (phones, cd players, etc)
consumer-grade D/A Conversion isn't all that.

 

Last edited: Dec 29, 2015

I talk about crisping not clipping, crisping for lowest part at -96-98 dB, when it disappears like hrshshrrhshr - and I say when dither is not used, dither saves it by adding noise and gives much more dynamic range for quiet places.
And harmonics. Export sine with dither and without, you will see that non-dithered version creates harmonics: 2kHz, 3kHz....

About integer, I said that 32 bit float has lower dynamic range (about 144 dB) than 32 bit integer (about 192 dB) and can prove it.

 

with crisping, do you mean artifacts?

 

I don't remember English word, because I'm Russian...
word for "хруст"...like it is bitcrushing...

 

what you hear on hihats and stuff at low bitrates?

 

low bitrates: I hear bubbling, less highs, low precision, worse transients))
But non-dithered quiet parts (like about -100 dB) it becomes bit-crushed, noisier, "crisping" of very quiet tails (e.g. reverb). That's why I'm explaining 'bout dithering and its absence.
I just have no clue what you are trying to tell me.

 

-2dB for me as well so far so good

 

I also saw a Similar Tutorial from "Multipier"s Youtube page that said the same thing. If your going to go down to MP3 then do 1-1.5. I also used to only do -.03. He even showed good examples of it. Great thread BTW (Here is the link for his tutorial:

 

Would be "crackle" I guess. But of course, that's what dithering is all about. To avoid these quantization artifacts.
Still, it's better to encode the 24-bit audio directly to MP3/AAC. LAME and modern AAC encoders support 24-bit input, so that the whole dynamic range of 24-bit is considered for compression.

Apple writes: