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Splinter wrote:
Regarding MD's comment about recording to tape at 0VU: You must have not recorded rock and roll. Rock and roll was ALL about tape compression. That was the beauty of Ampex 499. You could soak that stuff and it would just get creamier and creamier. 0VU was a given... if not hotter! Obviously, hi-hats were not at 0VU.
Dang. I thought I was done with the cowbell comment.
Yes I have recorded rock n roll to analog tape. A properly calibrated deck and board will mean that a signal that is 0 on the board is 0 on the tape deck VU. That's the starting point. Then it is a question of how far above that signal can you go before you hear saturation to the point you don't like it. How far above 0VU you can go is headroom, and how much of that you get in the analog world depends on the rest of the circuitry and what the tape can hold. You could argue that there is no absolute ceiling with analog tape. You may not get any more volume, but you may still hit the tape harder to get that good compression and distortion.
Digital converters are not like that. The A/D converter has an absolute ceiling. That ceiling is "digital zero". Digital zero and analog zero are not the same thing. That's why you do need to know the full scale range of the A/D converter. If the A/D converter has a full scale gain range of 18dbu, that means that the signal that registers 0 on the analog VU will register -14db on the digital meter. The 18dbu FS range of the converter means you have 14db of available headroom above the analog 0 +4dbu VU reference.
tripit@earthlink.net wrote:Typically, at least for me, we used +6 for 456 and +9 for 499. 499 could really take a beating - I know guys who went higher. Mind you this was on studer 800's at 30ips. Ahh....the smell of fresh tape in the morning.....don't get me started on editing with razor blades.
Yup. That was it. +9 for 499. Like butta...
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This has been a great discussion, and I started to try out new levels yesterday.
Without wanting to go OT too much, trimming your input levels can really open up space in the mix, but it then creates a huge difference between the playback level and the monitor level that Audible Mode plays back with.
I can listen to tracks happily with the new levels, but as soon as I highlight a region or scrub in Audible Mode, the playback level of the selection takes my head off.
I looked in the manual to see if Audible Mode can be attenuated, but didn't see anything. Am I missing something basic here?
