| Headroom doesn't just mean the top end of the gain spectrum where you hit distortion...that's a common misconception. It goes in both directions.
Headroom is the amount of gain you have between your noise floor and where you start clipping. So if a board has a lot of room on the high gain side, but has a high noise floor, then it doesn't have much headroom.
Limiting factors are usually due to the manufacturer skimping on parts. The power supply and power distrobution are a lot of times the main culprits. If a console is underpowered it will wreak havoc with it's headroom. And if the power can't get to the active components efficiently, they will not operate to their maximum potential. Also, improper decoupling of the power rails can cause noise.
Putting things in stereo channels would make no difference if the opamps and/or transistors in the channels are underpowered. You'd just have more noise due to more open channels.
Essentially any console that costs less than 5 figures new is likely going to have these issues, because manufacturers are more concerned with profit margins, by using cheap parts and leaving some necessary parts out, than putting out a high end quality product. |