ORIGINAL: spheris

3. Bit Depth level set to target medium and conformed (usually 16 bit depth for CD otherwise 24 for DVD-A, though only a few dozen houses are set up for it in the states currently)

I have read many of your posts, and respect your experience and opinion. I must be misunderstanding you.

I hear folks say get the recording to about -0.3 db

Then I hear get it to around -3.0

Is this at the mastering stage or what?

Right now most

ORIGINAL: spheris

Final output was the meaning for target resolution of 16 or 24

What target depth you mix at bears directly on the final output yes but that's an entire thread unto itself and would probably only confuse the issue for anyone but the dedicated. But if there's a real show of hands for it. I'll try my best to elaborate.

ORIGINAL: spheris
Post Mix
Established standard is -18 for Audio, -27 for Video. Everything goes on this one as we've learned from letting A&R people make decisions about relative volume versus the technology used to play it back.

Engage in the loudness race if you feel you need to, but bear one important rule in mind. You are remembered for how badly the final product will sound long after the reviews are written for the quality of the writing/playing. The majority of what is produced this decade will be forgotten shortly after as the pendulum swings back towards the audiophile market again - so plan ahead. Better to do it right now, than try to recreate it later.

Just a thought.

ORIGINAL: Pilgrim

Thanks much, SteveD,
Do you think that we could require this (your) post at the top of every thread in these forums?

This is quality information that is somehow being excused away often.

Pilgrim

ORIGINAL: SteveD

My own personal experience:
I have found that limiting to -0.1db at sample rates greater than 44.1khz many times causes overs in CD Architect PRIOR to sample rate conversion. Yet, if I convert to 44.1khz before loading the file into CD Achitect, there are no overs.

I could understand overs resulting from disturbances or slight changes during sample rate conversion, but -0.1db in Sonar should be -0.1db in any other audio application supporting the same sample rate... right?

Wrong!

I actually contacted Peter Haller at Sony Digital Media and described the problem. He had me send him 2 second clips of each example. Peter had the samples analyzed and there were in fact overs that could be detected on both the 24/96 file as well as the 16/44.1 file. However, in the 16/44.1 file, they were "hidden due to either metering conventions, internal limiting, or requantization".

To correct the problem, the analyst recommended that I "prep the tracks with more headroom (-1.5 dB or so) and add gain in CDA if desired/necessary." - 12/26/03

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The thing of it is, when you play live, this stuff is happening anyway. There's seperate sources for every sound, for the guitar, the keys, the hat, the bass, the other guitar, the vocals, the snare, the kick drum, the other other guitar, and all of these things are individual sources coming from human musicians all listening to each other and playing off of each other in dynamic, subtle, exciting ways. But then you go to record it, and you only got two speakers to get all that wild energy to come out of, and everybody's playing one at a time with a click in the headphones, and nervous about their sound and focusing on not making mistakes, and all that stuff, and it ends up a totally different vibe from those beery, sweaty, bright lights, dark corners, dancing people nights in the local club. So the trick is to find creative ways to capture and/or fake that energy and vitality that happens in the room when it's really hot.