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Originally Posted by Dave Martin  Umm... not in the real world. A 24 bit signal has a theoretical dynamic range of 144dB - not only a wider dynamic range than the analog equipment can handle, but a much wider range than the human ear can handle. Even a 16 bit signal has a theoretical dynamic range of 96dB - still more than the human ear can deal with. There's no problem at all with leaving 10-12dB of headroom when recording digitally - the reason we used to record as hot as possible in the analog tape days was to get the best possible signal to noise ratio - problematic because of the inherent noise of analog tape. |
Exactly - I've learned this the hard (expensive) and painful way.
A bit of headroom (i.e. at least 6db of headroom) will also help to give you real headroom (even taking intersample peaks into consideration) during mixing and mixdown. Mastering should be the process of taking that material and dithering/compressing/phasing it (and, in the process, getting the last few dbs out of it - if you buy into the loudness concept). I think far too many (including me) have tried to get right up to 0db during the recording, mixing phase because of 1) we want a hot mix and 2) it sounds "better" in headphone mixes and during mixing as a hot signal is easier to solo during eq/plug in application. Unfortunately, it contributes to more "noise" in the mix in many cases - sometimes noise that doesn't seem to be present until you render your mix...and wonder why it's just not as clean as it should be given what you've been solo'ing and working with during mixdown.
Jay
