Tomas Danko wrote on Fri, 12 January 2007 00:12 |
Kendrix wrote on Thu, 11 January 2007 20:29 |
I understand the distinction you are making between available dynamic range of the medium and the actual dyunamic range of the signal you place on that medium. I agree.
However, if you turn the amplitude of an incoming signal down to zero you have zero dynamic range. If you fully modulate a signal having 100 db of dynamic range then you've got 100db. Modulate to 50% and you have reduced the range accordingly. So, doesnt it follow that by reducing the amplitude of the incoming signal so that it to sits at -12 verus zero you have reduced its dynamic range? That was my point.
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The cool thing is that within a 24 bit system you can slide that 100 dBu-range recording up and down... say... 44 dBu down from the dreadful zero and still have full dynamics.
Practically speaking that's not the most common thing to record, and also practically speaking those 44 dBu will be diminished somewhat due to the inherent s/n ratio of the converters.
Still, lowering the maximum peak will not reduce the overall dynamics in a 24 bit digital recording system.
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Now I understand your point Tomas. Thanks.
Yes... pulling the track fader down after conversion to generate any needed headroom on the summing bus wont reduce the dynamic range of a typical real world signal in a 24 bit system.
This may be prefereable to reducing the amplitude of the incoming analog signal hiting the A>D converter. In that case you are reducing the dynamic range of that signal. However, you do not impact the quality of the reconstructed waveform. That was my point. In this case, if you manage to leave the fader at zero gain you avoid any potential artifacts of the digital math involved on that fader (most relevant if floating point math is NOT used).
I suspect the best approach depends on the specific situation.
With the best available converters and floating point math Id suppose full range conversion and a subsequent track fader reduction might be the way to go.
In the real-world I usually end up somehere in the middle...both
trimming the input upon conversion if required to get close and using modest fader gain reduction at mix time.
I sure hope this got us out of the "academic" doghouse