GAIN LEVELS on mics

[marilyn manson and the spooky kids]

still haven't figured this out.

please , can someone tell us what the gain levels should be, and the overall mic recording levels, etc....

we want to know how to do things the right way.
thanks.

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[marilyn manson and the spooky kids]

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[Bastiaan]

As loud as possible, but not too loud. I know you want more specifics....but thats just impossible. When you are recording its better to stay on the safe-side (clippings cant be undone that easily), but dont record too low, as your noise will increase....

As a fist-rule....let the peaks be at something like 80%. It is no use in trimming the levels with the faders in protools, since they arent used to set recording-levels. You have to do that with your mic-pre's (with digi001 they are on front of the box) or the line-in settings in ptle (setups>hardware>other)

[staylor]

I agree. Get them as hot as you can into PT without clipping and you'll have a good signal to work with.

[where02190]

-15db in the digital is equivalent to 0db analog. In other words if you have a signal that hits -15db on the PT meters and plugged it into an analog +4db tape input, it's pfl would be 0db.

Don't push preamps or compressor output levels to get more gain, because all you are really doing is adding noise. If you really need more level then normalize the track.

Hope this is helpful.

[m-shack]

Isn't -20dbFS equal to 0dB analog? At least what most pros use for reference.

[Park Seward]

I think this will always be confusing...

0 dBu Preferred informal abbreviation for the official dB (0.775V); a voltage reference point equal to 0.775 Vrms.

+4 dBu Standard pro audio voltage reference level equal to 1.23 Vrms.

0 dBV Preferred informal abbreviation for the official dB (1.0V); a voltage reference point equal to 1.0 Vrms.

-10 dBV Standard voltage reference level for consumer and some pro audio use (e.g. TASCAM), equal to 0.316 Vrms. (Tip: RCA connectors are a good indicator of units operating at -10 dBV levels.)

0 dBFS A digital audio reference level equal to "Full Scale." Used in specifying A/D and D/A audio data converters. Full scale refers to the maximum peak voltage level possible before "digital clipping," or digital overload (see overs) of the data converter. The Full Scale value is fixed by the internal data converter design, and varies from model to model.

SMPTE says -20 dBFS to equal +4 dBu.

Make sense?

[Park Seward]

A recent thread that went on for many pages said not to record too hot. You gain nothing since the signal to noise ratio is over 110 db (140 db possible) and you run the risk of clipping and alias distortion. Most report improved performance by bring the levels down from the roof.

Standard digital reference level is around -20 dBFS. Dolby Digital uses a voice reference level of around -31 dBFS leg(A) to give headroom for the car crashes and explosions.

[mattm]

there is always a trade-off with digital recording - low resolution or unwanted artifacts. the lower the level, the lesser the 'resolution' but the higher you record, the more you're going to hear how crap A-D/D-A converters really are.

it's all a matter of opinion but over-antialiasing a converter will make it sound smoother to most people as the unwanted artifacts are filtered out. there is a trade-off here too: less audio spectrum to work with. i prefer this approach (a friend of mine has an old 16bit RME card. it uses the crappiest phillips converters but they creatively smoothed them out by over filtering and as a result they sound great) to the use of the full 20-20 bandwidth.

~matt

[Park Seward]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by mattm:

it's all a matter of opinion but over-antialiasing a converter will make it sound smoother to most people as the unwanted artifacts are filtered out. there is a trade-off here too: less audio spectrum to work with.
~matt<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What is "over-antialiasing a convertor"? Are you talking about a low pass filter placed before the A/D convertor?