BenMMusTech


You always want to have the last word

Oh the irony 

try to avoid loud guitar cabs too I think they are too loud! I think we can leave that stuff to Danny. I love recording guitars direct and getting stuck into them inside the DAW. All be at a very low volume at 2am in the morning! I think we have really progressed in this area for sure. Plenty of distortion there but it's good distortion though!

 
LOL Jeff! I got news for ya brother, it's rare for me to crank anything up loud unless I have to cab wise. When you get a guy looking for that Angus Young type tone, there's usually no other way other than loud. But for everything else, the newer high gain features in amps and pre-amps allows us to get a nice saturation at a lower volume. The only time I even record cabs is when we are looking for the coloration the actual cab has on the sound. They even have impulses for that now too that work a treat. RedWirez has some incredible cab impulses that are realistic. :)
 
-Danny

mattplaysguitar

BenMMusTech


You always want to have the last word

Oh the irony 

It was suppose to be!

Danny Danzi

try to avoid loud guitar cabs too I think they are too loud! I think we can leave that stuff to Danny. I love recording guitars direct and getting stuck into them inside the DAW. All be at a very low volume at 2am in the morning! I think we have really progressed in this area for sure. Plenty of distortion there but it's good distortion though!

 
LOL Jeff! I got news for ya brother, it's rare for me to crank anything up loud unless I have to cab wise. When you get a guy looking for that Angus Young type tone, there's usually no other way other than loud. But for everything else, the newer high gain features in amps and pre-amps allows us to get a nice saturation at a lower volume. The only time I even record cabs is when we are looking for the coloration the actual cab has on the sound. They even have impulses for that now too that work a treat. RedWirez has some incredible cab impulses that are realistic. :)
 
-Danny

I like being able to do this high gain stuff without blasting the ear drums out. 

For those interested in the twist introduced with the accumulation of noise across several channels...

Music signals sum additively (as you would expect) whereas noise signals do not - that is uncorrelated noise signals do not. In this sense uncorrelated means random and not in any way correlated to the music signal on the channel. This kind of noise is typically caused by thermal noise in resistive components and is usually the type of noise that comprises the noise floor of well designed circuits.

In a way uncorrelated noise is benign in that adding together two channels does not double its level but increases it by square root of 2 - about 1.4, and adding together 4 channels increases it by only 2 times, 16 channels - only 4 times. That is, its result is the square root of the sum of its squares. 

This is why some very low noise pre-amp circuits use parallel signal paths as you get a halving of noise to signal for each 4 parallel paths. It also explains why wide tape is quieter than narrow tape.

On the other hand correlated noise does sum normally. Correlated noise being noise related to the music in the channel eg intermodulation distortion, harmonic distortion, clipping, aliasing noise, over and undershoots, ringing etc.

On the main topic, imho the sensible approach is to be aware of the compromise necessary to make sure your signal is large enough to have a usable SNR, and small enough to guarantee no input clipping. That will depend on source material, won't it? 

Rock guitar has such a low dynamic range that it can be recorded at almost any digital level, any recording noise being swamped by amp and pick-up noise, and the loudest parts limited by the self compression and limiting of speakers and amp at full output. On the other hand, classical music demands the best from both recording equipment in terms of self noise, and in the choice of nominal recording level so that there is not a chance of input clipping. Also bear in mind that classical music is often released on CD at low levels in any case. We are talking 16 bit here and the music is quite capable of being achingly beautiful at levels far less than -20dbfs

The great thing about 24 bit recording is that you don't need to sweat too much to get as close to 0dbfs as possible. 

Can any of you say that pieces you have recorded at -20dbfs or less have suffered - except from when you got the gain-staging in the analogue world wrong? 

Jeff Evans


I don't agree that digital recording introduces harmonic distortion, that is bollocks!

Jeff I believe what it is is that some ADC makers set things up so the analog side starts to distort before they clip digitally - so that if you happen to clip, it might "soften" the clipping a bit and sound better than the hard digital clipping. But I think it's more designed to mitigate accidental clipping somewhat than it is meant to be a desirable coloration - not that it couldn't be used as such.

cliffsp8

In a way uncorrelated noise is benign in that adding together two channels does not double its level but increases it by square root of 2 - about 1.4, and adding together 4 channels increases it by only 2 times, 16 channels - only 4 times. That is, its result is the square root of the sum of its squares.  

 

And I want to point out that this ratio of 1.4 equals the +3dB RMS I stated earlier. Peak is still double (+6dB) though.

BenMMusTech


 

Have you even read any of that Paul Frindle stuff I mean you are quoting most of his stuff and he def sugests the posibility of harmonic distortion,  who know's where it is happening??

Pretty much everyone else in the thread knows. But as you usually do, you're assuming that you not understanding something means it's somehow ineffable. It isn't, it's just that YOU don't understand it. But being so aggressively determined not to listen to what people are telling you, I do wonder what the point of these threads is. After all this verbiage, you are still as clueless as you were before. When was that "digital warmth" one? Something like six months ago? That's a long time to have learned nothing.  

John T take it easy with him

There was a guy who used to post regularly over at GS by the name of OldAnalogeGuy and he used to come out with similar BS, I wonder if they're related

Hey, Cliff! You should post here more often, man. We here in the science contingency can always use another rational voice. Drew can't do it all himself, and the rest of us have day jobs.