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jdunn · 12th May 2005

Something like that. All these numbers confuse my primitive wookie brain rather quickly.

If your mic pre has +20dbv of output, and let's say you only want to drive them to around +16 to keep things clean. Then 0 dbv on your A/D converters should be calibrated to somewhere around [EDIT] -20 dbfs (digital full scale).

That way, you can drive the output of the mic pres to a peak of +16 dbv for peaks around -4 dbfs on your DAW. The mic pres shouldn't distort, as you're leaving 4 dB of headroom below their max output. Same with the converters

I'm not sure if I'm off by 4 dB here because balanced is +4, but anyway. Probably wrong, who knows. That's the way it makes sense to me.

[EDIT] I was half asleep when I wrote the original post. Now do I have it right?

12th May 2005	#9
jdunn Head of Bumping Security (B.S) Joined: Feb 2004 Location: in the hills of Southern California Posts: 2,944	Something like that. All these numbers confuse my primitive wookie brain rather quickly. If your mic pre has +20dbv of output, and let's say you only want to drive them to around +16 to keep things clean. Then 0 dbv on your A/D converters should be calibrated to somewhere around [EDIT] -20 dbfs (digital full scale). That way, you can drive the output of the mic pres to a peak of +16 dbv for peaks around -4 dbfs on your DAW. The mic pres shouldn't distort, as you're leaving 4 dB of headroom below their max output. Same with the converters I'm not sure if I'm off by 4 dB here because balanced is +4, but anyway. Probably wrong, who knows. That's the way it makes sense to me. [EDIT] I was half asleep when I wrote the original post. Now do I have it right?