BenMMusTech


Did no one understand the concept of optimum or optimum operational level and each recording medium has it!!

DeeringAmps


Ben,
IF you WANT a real education read the GS thread I liked to earlier.
Skip Burrows works WITH and ON SSL consoles EVERYDAY.
Paul Frindle was on the design team AT SSL.
They are ADAMANT that you keep your signal levels the same in the digital realm as you would in hardware.
Danny's input PEAKING at -6 is like pushing the VU all the way to the right. His AVERAGE signal will be right at Ovu.
At 0dBfs the needle will be PEGGED.
Nothing personal here Ben. You are free to record however "sounds" best to you.
You don't have to believe a single word I say, (and probably shouldn't, I'm just another internet "Know it all") BUT Skip and Paul have REAL credentials.

'nough said.

T

Jeff Evans


Just out of interest the SSL console I was referring to in one of my previous posts is a fully analog console only. All A to D and D to A in our case is handled by AVID HD 192 interfaces outside. (3 to be precise)

But you still need an rms ref level at some reference point and SSL were suggesting the ref levels I mentioned before eg -24 -22, -20, -18 etc. -20 is a good one because it matches the K level. The VU was calibrated at -20 on the particular console we have had installed at the factory.

Ben some of your ideas are not over wrong in that recording hot was a good thing to do in the past. (I spent many years working with EMU samplers from 8 bit into 12 bit and 14 bit so I know what you are talking about. You did have to sample hot back in those days otherwise it sounded just plain bad!) But now with both 24 bit recording and the fact that almost any converter you buy now is going to be pretty excellent in the scheme of things so now we can virtually relax levels wise now and just work with say a K ref level of -20 without any concerns that things are not being recorded well.

Even if we are at -20 for example and the music dropped down 30 db below that which is very very quiet compared to the original level, we are still only at -50 and at 24 bit there is still over 80 db down below -50 even before any of that distortion that you are rightly talking about would even come into effect.

Bass does not benefit from being recorded hot either. All frequencies will sound the same pretty well at any level.

Jeff Evans


Ben what you are talking about now is the useable dynamic range that any converter is to actually going to give you. But that might be hard to quantify because while one converter might only use 101 dB out of the available 144 dB of range another might be better and in fact achieve say 120 dB out of 144 dB. How do we measure it? It is a good point and warrants some research into the subject to see how much actual dynamic range is available. I have heard that most converters use about 6 dB less dynamic range that is fully or theory wise avalaible. eg 16 bit in reality is 90 db of range and 24 is supposed to be 138 dB

But even if it varies etc I still feel that it is probably still a lot of dynamic range that is available. Even if a converter only used 101 dB of range and you had a signal way down at -50 then there is still 51 dB of range below that before the noise is going to even become an issue. Don't forget the -50 db signal is already 30 db down (from -20) and that represents a very quiet sound in itself.

I do agree about something though and that is the fact the final medium we are listening to is say 16 bit and I think it is good to make sure your final 16 bit master is reasonably loud and that still holds. Even a K-12 level is pretty loud and hot and still allows for plenty of transients.

drewfx1

BenMMusTech


Now even Presonus which have some of the best cheap interfaces on the market, I think if I remember rightly their converters use 114db of the 144db 24 bit spectrum, because they are so cheap and even though they claim to have low jitter specs, I still see the theory being of use because of the jitter problem and the distortion that jitter introduces.
 

Hmm. I wonder if I should point out that the level of jitter distortion is relative to the signal level, so if you have a hotter signal you get proportionally hotter jitter distortion too?

As I understand it, almost none (perhaps actually none) of the interfaces sold as 24 bit actually achieve 24 bits of meaningful recording, and 20 bit is about standard.