Actually, these are two completely distinct phenomena. Dithering exists in both the visual and the audio realms, as corysama pointed out in their linked articl

Actually, these are two completely distinct phenomena. Dithering exists in both the visual and the audio realms, as corysama pointed out in their linked article [1]. The term's use is identical in both realms, but neither is really related to stochastic resonance. Dithering is a technique of adding noise to disguise sampling boundaries. It hides unrealistic artifacts from digital downsampling of analog signals, but it does not add more realistic detail. Critically, it does not increase the signal-to-noise ratio. The phenomenon being described here occurs on a biological level. As described above, the additional noise improves your visual acuity. That is, you can extract /additional/ details with the noise added which could not be resolved before. This is due to a nonlinear change invoked in the system receiving the signal, not from the change to the signal itself. So, while adding the noise initially decreased the signal-to-noise ratio, the overall effect on the entire system is a increase in signal-to-noise ratio. Here the mechanism, explained in the Henrig paper, appears to be purely biological, but stochastic resonance is not strictly a biological phenomenon; it can also be seen in the electrical domain [2]. [1] http://loopit.dk/banding_in_games.pdf http://loopit.dk/banding_in_games.pdf [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance