SoftClip???

You're reading what you want to read from this. None of this 'evidence' suggests anything of which you claim. You're reading between the lines and extrapolating your own ideas. If I were to read between the lines (which doesn't mean I'm right), I would extrapolate all these to be mainly marketing tools - making the unit do more than it really needs to do and to maybe look more suitable for people who think that hotter sounds better so they sell more units to a wider audience. It's certainly got you hooked ;)

Can this end already?

So, the device uses compression on the signal if it's hot enough to clip. Lots of interfaces and other devices do that. It's great protection for people who try to record too hot.

Bristol_Jonesey


...End of.

If only....

The fact we are talking about DSP based effects mean we are in the digital world and have already gone through our converters. Driving HOT does not necessarily mean pushing your A to D close on the way in.

There is no reason why you cannot just set your incoming rms levels down at a ref point such as -20 dB FS. That is where the soft clip comes in on some A to D. They are just catching the signal  to keep things under control and prevent going into odB FS. It would be a form of limiting I would say. And 12 dB of headroom might just be another way of saying the signal can go 12 dB above normal and it will be contained down before it eventually may clip. You don't have to come anywhere near it. We are cruising right down at -20 with 20 dB of headroom before any of these things start to apply.

Once into the digital world the signal flows into the pre DSP that Ben is talking about. Nothing to stop you driving the input of that plugin hard and really making it work. But then the final output of any plugin or process can be reset back down to -20 dB FS or ref level. Only driving hot within the plug to get the best out of the DSP process, then clean lower level digtial from that point on again. Onto a track to be recorded etc.

My EMU 1212 setup has got onboard DSP processing from a raft of effects and they sound pretty good actually. Not my first choice but very useable. So the effects can be applied, heard and recorded right from there. They also pop up inside your DAW as VST plugins which is another great way to access them. You don't have to use a lot of stuff on the way in but sometimes some gain, downward expansion and just very loud catch transients limiting can make a big improvement to the quality of the track you are recording.

Ok lets get a few things straight, I never said digital clipping or overs was a good idea.  I said a level of -6 to -3 db was the desirable level to aim for when setting input levels.  Even Danny D says he sets a level of -6db as his input level.
 
What we have been talking about just so we're clear is a)resolution.  So to recap, resolution was whether we lost any audio information if we recorded the input signal too low.  Most have said this is not true but it may have been the case when we only had 16 bit converters.
 
Then b) and I may have gone on a tangient on this one and confused readers, 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion and how to achieve this.  I argued that to get this most desirable effect, we had to record somewhat hot.  Now this is where it got confusing and I never suggested that I was the only one who did it: was this idea of hybrid musician's and the use of real and virtual instruments and this perhaps because of audio interfaces rather than a mixing desk needed another think about how we set levels and record into the ubitiquious black box.  This was to achieve 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion.
 
Now if my little knowledge of electronics are correct, each pre-amp whether that be transitor based or tube based has optiumum operating level and somewhere around this level we start to get harmonic distortion 2nd for Tube based pre-amps and 3rd for Tranistor based pre-amps.
 
Now I have added c) Softclip which it seems quite a few of these audio interfaces now employ.  Softclip, Soft Limit and Overload protection or whatever you call it suggests that there is an element of truth to what I am saying, that is to get 2nd and 3rd level harmonics on the analouge side of your convertors you may need a fairly hot signal.  Now what is also cool about these DSP effects is that they emualate some form of saturation, whether that is Tape or Tube.
 
Now I never mentioned anything about clipping your convertors, ok!! I understand this is bad.  I did however suggest that once the audio passes into the convertor, who know's what happens.  And in a link to a GearSlutz, Paul Frindle's based Digital Myths thread he said there might be something going on in terms of digital harmonics.  Now I am not going to pretend I understand this or say it's true because it's just not possible to know this without doing some proper testing.
 
This is where people were getting confused, people thought I was talking about clipping, when in actual fact I was talking about this concept and wether this was possible and or desirable??
 
Here is where Danny D might be correct, I can write a lot of babble and it can be a little hard to decipher but I hope the above statement clears up what I have been talking about.
 
Ok Jeff's above statement is partially true but the only Soft Limiter (which is what these devices are) that actually allows you to change the level is Creamwares/Sonic-Core's offering.  Which I have used but not in the way Jeff has suggested.
 
Here is an example: http://soundcloud.com/aaudiomystiks/spacemonkey the vocal on this track was recorded super hot infact if you go to the link you will see a picture showing you that indeed there is no head room.
 
When I did the new mix, I did nothing to the vocal, it was super present, needed no compression and or EQ, I just turned down the gain by about 6db and mixed the track.
 
This is what I am talking about when I talk about recording hot and trying to get 2nd and or 3rd level harmonic distortion.
 
I hope I have cleared up some of my earlier ramblings.
 
Neb    
 
The term Digital Warmth has to do with these three intrinsically linked concepts.  My terminology sucks, I got to chapter 25 of the rule book and threw it away.  I am not an audio engineer I am a music technologist, this is where we are getting confused.  Perhaps I am talking about ideas and less about audio engineering theory one O one!!!

So to sum it up exactly, you're saying two things:

1 - You get better 'resolution' if you record hot.

2 - There is an optimal recording level related purely to the introduction of even and/or odd harmonics due 100% to the quality and type of pre-amps used in recording.


Is this exactly what you are trying to say?

I re-phrased your use of 2nd and 3rd harmonics into even and odd harmonics (thus 2nd, 4th, 6th ect and 3rd, 5th, 7th etc). Is this what you mean? Correct me if you mean only 2nd and 3rd.

How many threads have you started on this now, in the last week or so? Is this something like the sixth? You start the thread to talk about the same thing. People explain to you why you're wrong. Rather than accept that, you go and start another thread about it. People explain to you why you're wrong. And so on. I'm going to put this bluntly: pick it up, thicko. It's been explained to you a dozen times, and it's not even complicated.

He is like a zealot. He has a system and he is going to hammer on that thing until the cows come home.

Ben...give it up already. 

The truly bizarre thing is that this is so trivially uncomplicated.

Post count doesn't matter?

If I'd know that I would have posted a lot more