Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Toolbox - Manual (Page 12)

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6.1.3 Channel Configuration
In most DAW hosts, the Codec Toolbox plug-in can automatically detect the number of channels
whether it is inserted on a mono, stereo or 5.1 surround track. Some hosts, however, have no
method of passing channel configuration information to the plug-in, which subsequently defaults to
a surround configuration.
To overcome this limitation, the Toolbox plug-in provides an independent method to force the
channel configuration of the plug-in to match that of the host. The options window is displayed by a
right-click inside the Input Meter area. These options are only available when the plug-in is
instantiated on a six-channel track, or on mono and stereo tracks in host DAWs where they are
required.
6.1.4 Dither
The encoders in the plug-in will accept an input signal with greater than 16-bit precision, but in
such cases the signal will be dithered and truncated to 16-bits prior to the encoding process.
The plug-in will not introduce dither at the 16-bit level if the input to the plug-in has been already
been dithered and truncated to 16-bits.
6.1.5 Data Compression
All of the available codecs compress an audio data bit-stream. Different codecs compress using
different algorithms, and will compress to very different degrees.
HE-AAC is optimized for the best quality at very low bit rates, and will produce very small files
(potentially around one hundredth of the input file size). Lossless encoders, in contrast, are not so
effective at compressing data, and will produce files that are around half the size of the input. The
familiar mp3 codecs typically produce compression factors of around 12.
Remember that using perceptual coding is always a trade-off between more accurate reproduction
of the original signal and a higher compression ratio and smaller files.
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