Pat Farrell;248484 Wrote: > When you "normalize" you raise the music values, and also raise the > noise values. The music is louder and so is the noise. True, but if the noise of the source that was recorded is well above the digital noise floor, then it's a moot point. And in the context of recording LPs, you have a lot of headroom with any half-decent modern soundcard.
> What you want to do is record at a sufficient level that the music > naturally approaches dbFS. Then the noise will still be at whatever > level it was, and your signal to noise ratio, which translates into > quality listening, is better. By increasing the recording level in order to achieve close to 0dbFS, you're amplifying the noise of the source along with the signal. So if the source's noise is vastly higher than that of the recording chain, it doesn't really make any difference. > For LP recording, you can play the LP once, record the signal, and then > use your audio tools to find the max (or min) level. Then adjust the > levels to that you just kiss up to the max. > > By doing it twice, you can set the gain exactly right, and optimize the > signal to noise ratio for each LP. What if you happen to choose a first-pass recording level that causes digital clipping? The peak level of the recording will be 0dB, and you have no way of knowing how far over it would have gone had there been more headroom. So for this strategy to work, you need to choose a deliberately low recording level on the first pass. Although what you suggest does in principle produce the best possible results, in practice when recording from LPs they have such a high noise level and there is so much headroom around that you can be fairly conservative with levels and then use normalisation. (One last point: I'm pleased to note that you didn't bring up the rounding errors bogeyman as an argument against normalisation). -- 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
