Tracks bounced at 24Bit, 44,1khz. Do I need to dither before master burn?

Martin:

Burning a Redbook CD require 44.1 16-bit as you know. If you chose not to dither, the bottom 8 bits get thrown out. They get thrown out when you dither too, except you have more control over what gets discarded, as dithering basically adds noise, which is later truncated. You really only notice the difference if your music has quiet passages with very soft instrumentation where some digital artifacts or distortion may be audible, but aren't when dithered.

Dithering is a huge subject even though the process is rather subtle. Here are a couple of useful articles which will explain this better than I can.

http://www.pcrecording.com/dither.htm

Izotope also has a great guide that's even fun to read. It's about Ozone, but the explanations are still helpful.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html

Hope this helps.