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Originally Posted by FeatheredSerpent  Then headroom has no meaning whatsoever in that context, and I find it hard to believe that a specific term would be created to define 'well, anywhere really'. |
In the days of analog tape, "nominal operating level" was set where 0VU equals the magnetic flux at some number of nanowebers per meter:
From 15 MilliMaxwell to 1,200 NanoWebers
Some people calibrated their machines with 0VU at low levels to get low distortion. Others set 0VU hotter to get less hiss and more "crunch." Hence my comment that it's not absolute. That was analog. With digital the signal is perfectly clean right up to the point of gross distortion, so the whole concept of headroom is more or less irrelevant. As long as you observe reasonable gain-staging through the pres into the converters, noise will not be a factor and you won't get distortion on peaks.
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Headroom has always been defined to me to mean the difference between optimum operating level and circuit failure for any specific piece of equipment.
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That's the thing. There is no single "optimum" level with digital recording. Some people like to keep the average levels around -15 or even lower, some push as close to Digital Zero as they can get without clipping. Either approach works fine and sounds fine, so it's a matter of personal preference. At least that's how I see it.
--Ethan