After production spec was set at 16 bits, quantization noise became less of a concern, but emphasis remained an option through standards revisions.

The advantage is a 15%-40% reduction of device noise and quantization noise.

This effect becomes more dramatic with increased oversampling, which allows for quantization noise to be somewhat programmable.

Clearly, the quantization noise which is introduced to the data requires a rather more sophisticated error model.

The resulting quantization noise may produce a "warmer" sound impression, or a harsh one, depending on the amount of reduction.

Also, quantization noise can be "hidden" where they would be masked by more prominent sounds.

It is possible to make quantization noise more audibly benign by applying dither.

This is done to limit the temporal spread of quantization noise accompanying the transient.

Here, the quantization noise is once again assumed to be uniformly distributed.

The theoretical minimum noise floor is caused by quantization noise.