brawny;248359 Wrote: > The biggest question I have in terms of digitizing, is how to make sure > that I maximize the recording level while insuring that there is NO > clipping at all? Offhand, I would guess the answer goes something like > make sure I find the loudest portion of the album, and set the levels > accordingly, being sure not to clip, and then once set, record the > side. (Much like we did back in the day with audio cassettes, but they > were a bit more forgiving, being analog rather than digital). Good question. Avoiding digital clipping is of course one of the most important things you need to do. There are two strategies you can adopt:
1. A lot of modern soundcards have very low noise floors. My own M-Audio AP2496 (a modest vaguely semi-pro-ish card) has a noise floor of about -93dB. I don't know the Audigy, but would expect a noise floor at least as good as -85dB. Since even the very best LPs have a dynamic range of 70db at the most, you've got plenty of headroom to play with. Therefore you can afford to be very conservative with record levels. Provided you get peak levels above about -10dB, you're fine. Of course, you'll need to normalise later. Some people may point out that normalisation involves some degree of rounding error, but in my experience any error introduced is completely inaudble on recordings of LPs. 2. You might feel happier trying to maximise use of the available bits and aim for peak recording levels as close to 0dB as possible. (I have to admit that I do this myself, even though I know that it's not required). What I tend to do is visually inspect the grooves on the LP and pick what looks like the loudest section. Then I set record levels so that section peaks at about -3dB. This leaves a bit of headroom available for unexpected peaks. There is of course a danger that you might get a clip doing it this way (which of course requires re-starting the recording with the levels reduced a bit), but I can honestly say that it hardly ever happens. -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40894 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
