12 Jul
2013
12 Jul
'13
8:17 p.m.
On 07/12/2013 01:38 PM, Rusty Perez wrote:
Hi list,
I know this is a contravercial subject, but I'd like to hear some
viewpoints.
I use a delta 1010lt card. I'm wondering if I should carefully set my
input levels for each input source, or, if the digital convenience of
normalizing and dc ofset makes up for level defficiencies, without
adding noise.
I know the concern here is signal to noise ratio.
Would my delta add noise if I boosted input levels initially or, in
normalizing, am I just boosting the audio with the snr which I would
have recordedif I had boosted my input levels in the first place?
Does that make sense?
Thanks!
Rusty
This is not controversial. It's simply gain staging.
Record fairly hot to tape, but don't clip. If you see red lights turn
it down a bit. That said, recording at 24 bit leaves tons of resolution
and you don't need to record quite as loudly as we did in the 16 bit
ADAT days.
I never normalize the tracks in the DAW when mixing. I can't do it with
my analog machine, so I don't do it with my DAW. That said, if one or
two tracks is recorded really low, I will boost them up to about the
same levels as the other tracks.
I only normalize after mastering. In other words, when the song is
mixed and mastered, the last step is normalizing. You might not want to
normalize to zero, though. Some people believe in this new gremlin
called inter-sample distortion or some such thing.
Rich...