What levels do you record at in digital?

[Exocaster]

What levels do you guys record at? I usually try to get my levels as hot as I can without clipping, leaving myself a few dB to work with. Usually somewhere between -5 and -2. I've gotta pull my levels way down for processing and mixing, though.

Is this really such a good idea? I've heard it suggested that one should record in digital at much lower levels to allow for more headroom. How would that affect my sound, though? Would this merely give me a quieter, less detailed, noisier track, or are there real advantages to this method? I'm curious...

 

[Lopes]

I've tried it both ways because someone I went to school with told me it was better, but I haven't noticed any advantages to recording at lower levels digitally. I just record as hot as possible without letting it clip because in my experience a loud track with the volume pulled down usually sounds better than a quiet track with the volume pushed up.

 

[James Murphy]

absolutely do not record your tracks at low levels... you will not be using the full bit depth.... i.e., in a 24 bit session file, if you record low levels, you could end up, say, with a 12 bit word length, for instance.... then later, when you mix all your tracks, and even on individual tracks, you will hear the quantization distortion that caused. bad. record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping

 

[Kazrog]

absolutely do not record your tracks at low levels... you will not be using the full bit depth.... i.e., in a 24 bit session file, if you record low levels, you could end up, say, with a 12 bit word length, for instance.... then later, when you mix all your tracks, and even on individual tracks, you will hear the quantization distortion that caused. bad. record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping

That's what I've always thought, and we've talked about this before... but what annoys me is that there are a couple of people out there who have bitched when I send them (for example) guitar tracks that are as hot as possible without clipping because they say "this gives me no headroom!" I have also been told this with a stereo mix when going into mastering.

I have no idea why the fuck these people think that it's a problem to have a good signal level... and it makes me question their overall expertise. Is there something here that I'm missing that hasn't been discussed, or are the people I've worked with just grossly mistaken about how digital audio works?

 

[Bob Savage]

That's what I've always thought, and we've talked about this before... but what annoys me is that there are a couple of people out there who have bitched when I send them (for example) guitar tracks that are as hot as possible without clipping because they say "this gives me no headroom!" I have also been told this with a stereo mix when going into mastering.

No headroom? Unless you're smashing the guitar tracks with a compressor or something, I would think the headroom should be better with more bits being used for the audio.

 

[sorceron]

this is a good topic, ive wondered some of these same things myself, in fact just last night i was wondering wich was better.

 

[Bob Savage]

this is a good topic, ive wondered some of these same things myself, in fact just last night i was wondering wich was better.

Like was mentioned, lower input means less bits being used. Also, let's say you have two guitar tracks, one recorded at -18db and the other at -3db. You'll have a higher noise floor in the one recorded at -18 to acheive the same volume as the one recorded at -3.

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

"Using" more or fewer bits has no bearing on sound quality, though... resolution is fixed, but dynamic range affects the number of bits you use. Therefore, a recording with a wide dynamic range will use the most bits, but a recording rich in dynamics will by definition actually have a lower average level.
The main advantage to recording a hot signal is to improve noisefloor issues, but the digital noisefloor is extremely low, so it's not something you really have to worry about under normal circumstances (you'll likely have more issues with your studio's noisefloor long before you do with your A/D's).
But as everyone here seems to agree, recording as hot as you can without clipping is indeed a good practice. However, there's no need to worry if your average level seems a little low; as long as your peaks are at healthy levels without going over, you're fine.

 

[Bob Savage]

"Using" more or fewer bits has no bearing on sound quality, though... resolution is fixed, but dynamic range affects the number of bits you use. Therefore, a recording with a wide dynamic range will use the most bits, but a recording rich in dynamics will by definition actually have a lower average level.
The main advantage to recording a hot signal is to improve noisefloor issues, but the digital noisefloor is extremely low, so it's not something you really have to worry about under normal circumstances (you'll likely have more issues with your studio's noisefloor long before you do with your A/D's).
But as everyone here seems to agree, recording as hot as you can without clipping is indeed a good practice. However, there's no need to worry if your average level seems a little low; as long as your peaks are at healthy levels without going over, you're fine.

I think this is a great summary of the issue.

 

[James Murphy]

"Using" more or fewer bits has no bearing on sound quality, though... resolution is fixed, but dynamic range affects the number of bits you use. Therefore, a recording with a wide dynamic range will use the most bits, but a recording rich in dynamics will by definition actually have a lower average level.
The main advantage to recording a hot signal is to improve noisefloor issues, but the digital noisefloor is extremely low, so it's not something you really have to worry about under normal circumstances (you'll likely have more issues with your studio's noisefloor long before you do with your A/D's).
But as everyone here seems to agree, recording as hot as you can without clipping is indeed a good practice. However, there's no need to worry if your average level seems a little low; as long as your peaks are at healthy levels without going over, you're fine.

as for your first sentence, i do not agree... and neither do you according to the rest of your otherwise well-written post. perhaps you just didn't word it was well as the rest. anyway, this post seemed a bit like it was "correcting" me.... but i said nearly the same thing as you... just in much fewer words. if you re-read you will see that i said: "record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping".

the "fixed resolution" is what is available...not what is actually used by the program material. each bit adds six db more amplitude range which in turn increases the dynamic range that can be recorded by a given system... and that's what dynamic range is, functionally, in this discussion: the difference between the the quietest and loudest amplitude that a given system is capable of recording. higher bit depths yield a bigger dynamic range ... whether or not that dynamic range is used is dependent on the engineer and the source sound. the results of not using as much of the dynamic range as possible is quantization errors that sound like distortion. Quantization errors are when a sample falls between bits in the encoding process and can't be resolved properly... so it is simply cut off... and for each bit in a system the audibility of quantization errors (distortion) decreases by six db.... so this brings us to noise floor. not the noise floor of the system, but of the room your mic is in or the output of the device you have directly connected. yes, you will record all this and if your actual signal you intend to record is not hot enough then you are more likely to hear it. And, more to my point, if your signal is too low level in a 24 bit recording, then when you dither to 16bits you will be far more likey to end up with audible quantization distortion.

that's the long and the short of it... .but am i saying everything should be squashed to hell and recorded all the way to zero at all times? absolutely not... i'm saying what i said to start with: record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping.

 

[sorceron]

as for your first sentence, i do not agree... and neither do you according to the rest of your otherwise well-written post. perhaps you just didn't word it was well as the rest. anyway, this post seemed a bit like it was "correcting" me.... but i said nearly the same thing as you... just in much fewer words. if you re-read you will see that i said: "record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping".

the "fixed resolution" is what is available...not what is actually used by the program material. each bit adds six db more amplitude range which in turn increases the dynamic range that can be recorded by a given system... and that's what dynamic range is, functionally, in this discussion: the difference between the the quietest and loudest amplitude that a given system is capable of recording. higher bit depths yield a bigger dynamic range ... whether or not that dynamic range is used is dependent on the engineer and the source sound. the results of not using as much of the dynamic range as possible is quantization errors that sound like distortion. Quantization errors are when a sample falls between bits in the encoding process and can't be resolved properly... so it is simply cut off... and for each bit in a system the audibility of quantization errors (distortion) decreases by six db.... so this brings us to noise floor. not the noise floor of the system, but of the room your mic is in or the output of the device you have directly connected. yes, you will record all this and if your actual signal you intend to record is not hot enough then you are more likely to hear it. And, more to my point, if your signal is too low level in a 24 bit recording, then when you dither to 16bits you will be far more likey to end up with audible quantization distortion.

that's the long and the short of it... .but am i saying everything should be squashed to hell and recorded all the way to zero at all times? absolutely not... i'm saying what i said to start with: record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping.

yea thats clears things up even further. awesome.

 

[James Murphy]

let's analogize this with digital photography...

gruesome seems to be saying that it doesn't matter if the subject you want to photograph is only using 30% of the frame because it's still a 300dpi photo, and that's true enough, but what happens when you zoom in to just the 30% that you intended to shoot? you will see the pixels, the shapes will seem distorted, or "jagged"... same difference or even worse than if you shot only the subject filling the frame but only captured an only 72dpi image.

this is just an analogy of course.. but it's a pretty good one.

 

[Nitronium Blood]

Are you folks saying that its ok to 'go into the red', unless you can actually hear yourself clip?

This does not work for me. I view each track as a different ingredient quantity in a mix. If I let everything fill at its maximum with no audible clipping on one track, the second I create a new track and try to do the same... there will be audible clipping! The only thing I can do then, is reduce the voumes of both tracks. Then the third track comes in and I have to reduce volumes of all three and so on and so forth.

That's why, I just prefer to record stuff @ 70% full of the green bar. Then nothing clips, audibly or visually.

 

[Nitronium Blood]

absolutely do not record your tracks at low levels... you will not be using the full bit depth.... i.e., in a 24 bit session file, if you record low levels, you could end up, say, with a 12 bit word length, for instance.... then later, when you mix all your tracks, and even on individual tracks, you will hear the quantization distortion that caused. bad. record with your peak levels as hot as you can without clipping

This sounds to me like:

"Johnny and his friends were two feet tall and wanted to buy their own personal 100 hectares of land for sporting activities. The property owners looked at the two foot tall Johnny and his friends and laughed at them saying "Haha boys you are just too small for a large block of land... we are just gonna give you 50 hectares, bye now." Jonny shouted "Hey, you can't do that WE PAID YOU GUYS FOR 100 HECTARES". The propery owners replied "Sorry boy, you and your friends just too small for this here field" as they walked away.

But if Johnny and his friends were 7 and a half feet tall it would be a different story. The propery owners would have looked at the 7-1/2 tall guys and said "we just know you are going to make full use of the 100 hectares because you guys are so big and strong, so here you go... full 100 hectares cause we know you will be all over the place".

Is this kind of what you're saying James?

 

[James Murphy]

Are you folks saying that its ok to 'go into the red', unless you can actually hear yourself clip?

no one said anything like that in this entire thread. having pointed that out though, i'll say that the odd red clip indicator light is fine as long as you don't hear a clip.

This does not work for me. I view each track as a different ingredient quantity in a mix. If I let everything fill at its maximum with no audible clipping on one track, the second I create a new track and try to do the same... there will be audible clipping! The only thing I can do then, is reduce the voumes of both tracks. Then the third track comes in and I have to reduce volumes of all three and so on and so forth.

this is what faders are for.

That's why, I just prefer to record stuff @ 70% full of the green bar. Then nothing clips, audibly or visually.

and with that the engineering world has been turned on it's ear and recordists the world over rush to their studios to start using the "Nitronium Blood 70% of the green bar" theorum.

man, i hate to sound mean, but have you not been reading this forum for some time now?
keep coming back bro... this forum would be a lot duller without ya.

 

[sorceron]

Are you folks saying that its ok to 'go into the red', unless you can actually hear yourself clip?

This does not work for me. I view each track as a different ingredient quantity in a mix. If I let everything fill at its maximum with no audible clipping on one track, the second I create a new track and try to do the same... there will be audible clipping! The only thing I can do then, is reduce the voumes of both tracks. Then the third track comes in and I have to reduce volumes of all three and so on and so forth.

That's why, I just prefer to record stuff @ 70% full of the green bar. Then nothing clips, audibly or visually.

that doesnt make sense. its not going to clip the master out whatsoever if you turn the individual tracks faders down...like james said...

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

i don't think he's aware of that particular "technique."

 

[sorceron]

i don't think he's aware of that particular "technique."

hahah, yea its pretty advanced, ive just barely learned it myself.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

you need to get some of those finger strength exercisers, and work for many years to get the precision necessary.

 

[Ermz]

I guess what James is saying falls in line with an article I read recently that explained that a sine wave, recorded at the lowest possible amplitude in a digital system actually becomes a square wave as you only have the one bit to represent the waveform. So it makes sense that the lower you record your signal, that the higher the relative distortion becomes.

So James, what you're essentially saying is that in a 24-bit system, if you were to record your signal at -77db (unlikely, I know, but just using it as a hypothesis), you'd really only be using 12-bits of resolution for it?