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Originally Posted by JoeyM  I wonder because, you'd think it there's more signal mojo going from zero to -18dBFS. |
This depends completely on the design of the analog input stage. Some boxes, like the 2192 and Burl, were designed to sound good when hit hard by saturating and distorting in a sweet, analog way. Others, like Mytek or Pacific Microsonic, are just awesome circuits and stay totally clean thru to digital clipping, and even the clipping doesn't sound bad in small doses.
But on a lot of converters the analog stage has a sweet spot where it has the most transient fidelity and least distortion, and this is often found near the conservative input levels: RMS around -18, peaks around -10.
You gotta go by ear for this, see where your converters like to breathe.
Gregory Scott - ubk
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