Ditherpunk: The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering
> According to Wikipedia, “Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error”, and is a technique not only limited to images. It is actually a technique used to this day on audio recordings […]Dithering as a digital signal processing technique is also used frequently in the digital control of physical systems. One example of this is in the control of hydraulic servo valves[1]; these valves are usually pretty small and their performance can be dominated by a lot of external factors. One of the biggest ones is "stiction", or static friction, wherein if the moving parts of the valve are at rest it can take a large amount of current to get them going again which translates in to poor control of the valve and in turn poor control of the thing the valve is trying to move. It's common to use very high frequency/small amplitude dithering on these valves to eliminate the effects of stiction without compromising accuracy which greatly improves the control stability and responsiveness of the servo valves.1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrohydraulic_servo_valve