ralphpnj wrote: > That's not quite true and is just one of the many reasons why many > cassette recordings sound so bad. Ideally the average VU meter reading > should sit as close to zero as possible with the peaks going into the > red zone, but not too far into the red and not all the time.
Essentially correct. The VU meter was used for all tape recording, the principals are the same for cassettes, 8 tracks, or 2" 24 track professional tracking machines. You want as loud a signal as you can get, but not too loud. Louder signals have better signal to noise ratios, The noise is a constant, so louder improves the ratio. But there are limits that are a function of the tape, thickness of oxide or other material, head size, gap, etc. A real VU meter is expensive. They have calibrated response. And ralphphn's idea that the average that you see on a VU meter is a bit off, they are averaging devices. They don't show instaneous levels. A quick spike will not cause it to peg, it just make it go up. Its dampened, to reflect how tape machines really work. Someone up thread blamed going over to CDs and loudness wars. That's not completely correct. The can be no signal on a CD higher than 0dBFS (zero dB Full Scale). Everything is down from that. The "loudness wars" simply compress everything so its allways up near or at 0dBFS. A software pseudo-VU scale for a SqueezeBoxen should probably be calibrated so that 0 dB on the scale is shown when the signal is 3 or even 6 dB over. But for modern pop/rock, there is no dymanics, so its mostly silly. Well done classical, some jazz, etc. actually still has dymanics. But the tape based concept of keeping it at 0dB with ticks over into the red is not applicable to digital recording. Consumer tape is designed to have some slack, so you can abuse it some. Professional tape is much more expensive, and has higher performance, but does not tolerate the same abuse as consumer stuff. Same with photography film. The Kodachrome that most folks used could be ignored, left in your car, etc. for months, even a year or more. Professional film is kept in the refrigerator, and has to be developed within 48 hours of exposure. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
