Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Ruston  You're talking about analogue distortion...And it's a point on which I totally agree with you. But that doesn't change the fact that a mix full of hot digital signals leads to problems. You just end up having to pull everything down...and lets not even get into arguements about moving faders and all that stuff. Basically there's no benefit to recording hot and a lot of niggling problems, not least of all the risk of losing a take due to unwanted overloads. |
Actually you might be stunned to learn that you
can't overdrive the bus of a floating point DAW (no really), and you can just trim off any excessive level going into your bus via a master fader or trim/gain plugin...no problem, no loss of quality, effortless automation, no more faders to move than that. Or just neglect to apply makeup gain in your bus compressor if it likes the input level. Doing so lets you get as much distortion out of your
plugins as you want...yes and you might also be stunned to discover that virtually all plugins that people think sound good offer increasing (and often pleasant) distortion going up to 0dbFS (and often
past 0dbFS without going full square)...both on individual tracks and on the bus, without losing much in the way of dynamic range. If you print too low you will run into dynamic range problems that will tie your hands. No, 24 bit did not magically solve that.
And the occasional unpleasant over? They can be fixed nowadays in seconds with declippers. Quite well actually as long as the damage isn't too severe.
When you evaluate the entire chain start to finish, and you pick and choose exactly where you want to get your distortion, where you want to avoid a loss of dynamic range, where you have headroom and where you don't, digital actually becomes very easy, fast, and absolutely pleasurable. And your analog gear becomes your best friend...use it strategically, and never be afraid to squeeze every inch out of it!
But these "secrets" to getting there are studiously kept from people. I suspect when people discover these things they think it's their competitive advantage or something and they don't sing.
