^ this
It's very instructive to hear a 3 bit sample. It's almost unrecognisable as the original sound, until you add dither noise. Then it sounds like an extremely noisy, but exact, recording of the original. Dither noise on a 16 bit system is virtually inaudible, but it renders the sound that you hear a more accurate representation of the source.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 21:20, Reply)