Signal processing which modifies the data stream -must- (almost) always dither. Without that it introduces -significant and audible- distortion. That has been standard practice in digital audio for more than 50 years. That is why sox dithers by default.
Dithering is also known as noise shaping. Its purpose is to make the distortion introduced by signal processing as inaudible as possible. The distortion -cannot- be removed but it can be changed to broadband noise which is much less objectionable. OpenBSD is known for good engineering practice. Since the audio system is set to -force- users to accept whatever signal processing the system applies that processing should follow good practice as well. Other OSes allow unprivileged users to access raw audio devices and bypass any system processing. Users should be given that option. Geoff Steckel On 1/10/23 03:11, Jan Stary wrote:
I don't get the point of your message explaning what dither is. My whole point was that one of the sources of the perceived difference between how sox resamples and hows aucat resamples might be dithering, as aucat does not differ (right?).
