What levels do you record at in digital?

Benny H said:
Are there 'hot to tape' sort of emulating compressors around these days? Or is that sort of gentle effect something you can do on any reasonable compressor?

What I'm talking about is just how you could afford a few hot peaks on tape cause they compressed 'naturally'. It would be nice if you had this safety all the time with digital.
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I don't have enough inputs available to me to track drums straight to digital. But I do have an old Tascam MSR-16 analog deck sitting around. I usually track drums to that and then dump the tracks to PTLE. It sounds decent enough that I just might keep it around even if I had 16 inputs straight to PT...
 
All I can say is that if you record with your signal peaking at say -2 db compared with it peaking at say -8db, you cant hear the difference. Im sure James is correct. And you can probably hear the difference at -26db or something. But for practical purposes, get it in the ballpark and dont worry about it.

When youre mixing on a console, if you max everything out while recording, then you will end up having all the faders down near the bottom where they are less sensitive. Analog faders are made to set at or around unity where they have the best signal flow and most sensitivity right?

With digital or analog, I have found that if you get levels in the ballpark, you get great sound and you dont have to turn everything down when mixing. Shoot, sometimes I get lucky and am able to mix with a lot of the faders right at zero. Technically with digital mixers, that's where the sound is best cause of the math.

Colin
 
vile_ator said:
All I can say is that if you record with your signal peaking at say -2 db compared with it peaking at say -8db, you cant hear the difference. Im sure James is correct. And you can probably hear the difference at -26db or something. But for practical purposes, get it in the ballpark and dont worry about it.
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-8db average levels are no big deal in a 24bit recording... if you are stuck recording at 16bits though think twice before heeding Colin on this one.

vile_ator said:
When youre mixing on a console, if you max everything out while recording, then you will end up having all the faders down near the bottom where they are less sensitive. Analog faders are made to set at or around unity where they have the best signal flow and most sensitivity right?

With digital or analog, I have found that if you get levels in the ballpark, you get great sound and you dont have to turn everything down when mixing. Shoot, sometimes I get lucky and am able to mix with a lot of the faders right at zero. Technically with digital mixers, that's where the sound is best cause of the math. Colin
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this method will work out great for you if you record everything in an anechoic chamber or on direct input. if you record in the real world though you will find that recording something really low just because you are going to have it really low in the mix wil not sound nearly as good as getting a healthy level to start with... which is common practice of every pro i've ever worked with... and i've worked with a lot, including our Andy... ignore it at your folly. :D
 
No man, what I mean is get a decent level and dont obsess about it. Andy was saying the same thing here a while back. Common sence says get a good level. I dont really try to guess what my levels should be just so I can get my faders at unity! haha. I get a good level, and move on. But if I notice that I tracked 3 songs of vox with the level at -10, Im not going to make the guy start again! Im just going to finish the job and mix it. Ill get a great sound regardless.

Colin
 
vile_ator said:
No man, what I mean is get a decent level and dont obsess about it. Andy was saying the same thing here a while back. Common sence says get a good level. I dont really try to guess what my levels should be just so I can get my faders at unity! haha. I get a good level, and move on. But if I notice that I tracked 3 songs of vox with the level at -10, Im not going to make the guy start again! Im just going to finish the job and mix it. Ill get a great sound regardless.

Colin
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ah.. ok.. good, good.. how easy it is to misunderstand on the internet eh?... i'm glad you clarified. i was bit worried about ya there for a minute.

(edit: for the record, i personally would hope to never get 3 songs in before noticing my peak level was -10 on a vocal the whole time... and i would only keep those tracks if the performance was really fantastic.)
 
vile_ator said:
hehehehe. But really man, the real reason I dont worry about it is cause whatever dynamics I lose by recording at a low level, I get back with eq later in the mix.

JP22

(this is a joke for those of you who dont know JP22!!!)
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HA HA... I DON'T EVEN OWN A TUBE AMP!!

:headbang:
 
Thank you Mr. Paul White, and Sound On Sound Magazine...

Paul crystalizes the points i've been trying to make here.

Read the whole thing.. particularly section 3: Setting Up Gain Structure.

some of you who've posted in this thread will find particular interest in the sidebar: Hardware Compresspor or Plug in?


edit: i did find it odd that he seemed to be advocating to ALWAYS use a compressor.. but when you get to the end of the sidebar you'll see he's not really.
 
this post is for clarity... about why i argued with Gruesome, why i partially agreed with him, and why i posted the White article: i pointed out, through my analogy with the digital photo... that the part of a recording you WANT... is not using all the bits if it is low level, or low average level.

in agreeing with Gruesome on the "fixed resolution" point what i was on about was that if you make a 24 bit recording with low levels it's not going to show up in your system as a 12 bit recording for instance... the track properties will show it as a 24 bit recording, but less than 24 of those bits will be representing the data you want.

there you have it.. take it up with Paul if you want. ;)
 
Bob, you are correct from what I've read just browsing this real quick. I will compress clean gtr, vox, accoustic, anything with a large dynamic range on the way in and even have the peak limiter on just in case. Gruesome, I think you are picturing things wrong by thinking more dynamic range = greater amount of bits used. If its a graph, left to right would be time as in Khzs/sample rate, Top to Bottom would be Bit Rate but it's a sliding scale with bit rate,( I'm not going into algorithms, but especially at 24 bit, it'll be more forgiving if you are not at a great level) so it gets alot grainier towards the noise floor
 
Andy Sneap said:
Bob, you are correct from what I've read just browsing this real quick. I will compress clean gtr, vox, accoustic, anything with a large dynamic range on the way in and even have the peak limiter on just in case. Gruesome, I think you are picturing things wrong by thinking more dynamic range = greater amount of bits used. If its a graph, left to right would be time as in Khzs/sample rate, Top to Bottom would be Bit Rate but it's a sliding scale with bit rate,( I'm not going into algorithms, but especially at 24 bit, it'll be more forgiving if you are not at a great level) so it gets alot grainier towards the noise floor
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Thanks for your input, Andy!
 
Bob Savage said:
Thanks for your input, Andy!
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yes.. it's nice for me as well... feel vindicated... \m/.

thanks to Andy, and to Paul White.... i said the same thing, but my name doesn't carry as much weight in Andy's forum as Andy's does. ;)
 
James Murphy said:
yes.. it's nice for me as well... feel vindicated... \m/.

thanks to Andy, and to Paul White.... i said the same thing, but my name doesn't carry as much weight in Andy's forum as Andy's does. ;)
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Perhaps I didn't thank you (I'm too lazy to read back and see)... but if not, thank you too, James. Buy yeah, compared to Andy, you're nothin'. Hahahaha... :devil: :D
 
Bob Savage said:
Perhaps I didn't thank you (I'm too lazy to read back and see)... but if not, thank you too, James. Buy yeah, compared to Andy, you're nothin'. Hahahaha... :devil: :D
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so much for my warm and fuzzy feeling :cry:.


ha ha ha :headbang:
 
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