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Originally Posted by innesireinar Mhh, things are becoming more complicated.
In the thread on PSW you are referring to illegal clips that can occur
by processing a signal that previously was recorded close to 0dB (and
therefore your advicese were to work with signal around -6dB), right?
But if a processing such as eqing with very hi boosting doesn't cause
illegal peaks (because of hi internal headroom in the sony eq) what
(and where) can cause illegal peaks?
You were refer to many illegal tracks, each with illegal peaks mixed
together that could cause a degradation of the programme, therefore
it's not a summing issue, then, where is the problem? In the sum? Or
in any track?
If is a DA convertion issue like Bob said, it could be adjusted in the master track before going to the DAC? |
It has nothing to do with summing at all, neither does it have anything much to do with EQ particularly :-(
Oh dear - there are several issues here which are quite separate - but ALL involving level, some seen on meters and some not seen on meters - some that occur within the worksation and some that only occur in the play out system. It's difficult to know where to start - but I'll try to summarise briefly:
The different level situations are:
1. Reducing input levels to the mixer to avoid hard sample value overloads every time you try to do anything. These are visible on meters and you can see them, but they detract from the artistic process because you need to keep destroying balances every time you reduce gains to fix them. This is a convenience for operational reasons - it simply makes the mix 'go better'.
2. Reducing levels throughout the channel to avoid internal overloads on less capable plug-ins (that may not appear on meters). This is a technical issue with some plug-ins I have seen, but it does not happen with any Oxford plugs, as they all have internal headroom and cannot clip internally before maximum output is achieved.
3. Reducing levels at the OUTPUT of the mix in order to avoid reconstruction overs at the DACs (either yours, the consumers and/or both) that almost certainly will NOT be displayed on any meter within your workstation. The reason this occurs is that people are aiming for maximum modulation and the meters on your workstations only display sample values - NOT signal levels. This is why the limiter includes a reconstruction meter (which shows actual SIGNAL levels) and a dynamic method to 'fix' such overs without losing average level.
4. Similarly, being aware that some plug-ins have the equivalent of reconstruction INSIDE their processes and therefore can make a perfectly legal sample value signals (i.e. no red lights) into and illegal sample values (like the DAC above) but actually within the workstation. These may be seen on meters, but confuse people badly and may end up forcing you to make a final mixes much less loud than they could have been. Some plug-ins can do this without any modification to the freq response or loudness - even when set to 'flat' or in 'bypass'. I demonstrated this effect using the noise PT noise generator. The GML EQ is an example of this which was noted in the PSW thread - and it is not unique :-(