Quote:
Originally Posted by Ethan Winer  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.
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 |
Just to clarify....FWIW
There really is no such thing as "circuit failure" per this discussion....that has nothing to do with setting levels or clipping.
Circuit failure would be a capacitor popping or a resistor burning or a transistor going open.
Clipping is merely an amplifier stage that is being saturated causing a chopping off of the waveform at it's peaks....that's all it is. That's as far as the amplifier circuit will let you go! It's the brick wall....kinda like getting a flat top haircut....
Also "gross" distortion (which I've never heard that term used before??) Hehe.....maybe there's a use for it somewhere....I don't know?
All distortion is "gross"
unless of course it's controlled and applied distortion.
But distortion also has nothing to do with clipping and is a completely different topic!