Re: OT: Recording equipment

[The CA4 Organisation <jl@ca4.org>]

If you convert to digital with a reasonably good 24-bit converter 
will have a larger dynamic range than any preceeding analog stuff can 
reproduce.

This means you should not be concerned with recording "hot" at all. 
Recording hot is what you do with analog equipment and is a valid 
technique there.

I typically record so peaks are -16 to -18dBFS (that is 18dB below 
digital full-scale). As 24bit gives 144dB dynamic range this means 
that the noise level of any analog equipment will still be well above 
the digital noise level. And leaving 16/18dB of headroom allows you 
to do any post-processing with a very reduced risk of overload.

Note that even the best 24-bit converters seldom have an analog 
dynamic range anywhere near 120dB.

If you are concerned with keeping every musical nuance intact then 
make sure that any later bit-reduction to 16-bit (CD, MP3, whatever) 
is done with only the best dithering algorithms (POW-r or UV-22).



>I don't particularly care about compression. All I care about is being 
>able
>to run the signals reasonably hot to get the full dynamic range without
>being concerned about digital distortion if the signals should happen to
>spike up at some point.
>
>The signals will generally be coming from my Mackie 1642 VLZpro. I 
>generally
>only care about stereo inputs since most of the work I do seems to go
>straight to 2-track.
>
>Any advice would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks.
>Mark