Audio quality and headroom

[hurlingdervish]

this image clarifies the differences between audio qualities headroom



makes a lot more sense seeing it like this. live sound can be blasted because its only our ears that have the limit. upon recording that all changes.

so do your recordings in 24 bit if you can, and bring down the volume if you want to get it on a cd.
or just record to tape and let it saturate

[Nation]

Good post.

The most important aspect of this chart is the total dynamic range which is measured from the top of the yellow to the bottom of the green. It is always better to record on a medium with more dynamic range. Headroom isn't as important because Permitted Maximum Levels (PML) are arbitrarily defined.

Rather than reducing the volume to transfer a recording from a high dynamic range medium to a lower, it is better to use compression. Just reducing the volume will lose the lower ends of the recording in the noise floor.

Recording engineers who do mastering to vinyl tend to be really good at using compression to reduce the dynamic range of recordings. Since Vinyl has maximum dynamic range of 52dB and CD and DAT have over 80dB range.

True high fidelity recordings make use of the entire dynamic range that is available. This is contrary to the way most recordings are mastered today as a result of the loudness war. Wikipedia has a good article on it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war ).

[hurlingdervish]

Rather than reducing the volume to transfer a recording from a high dynamic range medium to a lower, it is better to use compression. Just reducing the volume will lose the lower ends of the recording in the noise floor.

could take years to correctly do this

and it would be kind of hard with just the settings on the sp.

because you need the ratio and threshold set at the lowest then work up from there until you hear the effect, then back it up until you cant tell

[Nation]

Right. The SP compressor is more for effect than mastering.

[hurlingdervish]

just putting it out there so you dont get 100 responses asking how to do it on the sp

[soundexp334]

good post, really useful information. thanks

[Nation]

good post, really useful information. thanks

If you're interested in more heckout this article:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun99/a ... ixcomp.htm

I don't know if you guys master your beats anything beyond what the sp-404 can do. But if you do send things out into a multi track recorder then these are some techniques that can really polish the finished sound.

[Hot Sauce]

cool info. this should make the low quality mp3s i upload sound much better.

[Nation]

cool info. this should make the low quality mp3s i upload sound much better.

Most definitely. It never hurts to add a little bit of house hold white noise. A sift can also be used to filter out some of the the mids to give it more of a tinny sound. Like, 'ts ts ts ts ts ts ts ts ...'.

[yeahkarl]

A sift? Never heard of...
how and where in the mixing process do you apply this
Scale-invariant feature transform.
I kinda get what it supposed to do but i have to go through the wikitext with a dictionary to even get half of it.

good thread!

[Nation]

beatbox chef

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKjh0ey7mc

[ellaguru]

beatbox chef

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKjh0ey7mc

ahaha

...

sorry, but i have a dummie question: what "headroom" means?

[Nation]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headroom

[tape smoke]

now i understand ^^^^

thanks, so basicly is just keeping it cool so you can work the magic mastering. which will reduce the headroom , but it wont matter anyway because its for the average listener anyway.

i think ?

[hurlingdervish]

i suggest getting the levels right at a lower volume then boosting it after

just not to low or else there will be a quality loss

if you dont give an ish about the loudness war and your multitracker doesnt have a brickwall limiter heres one i just found works perfect

http://www.geocities.com/fender686/

however if your mix isnt right before you use a brickwall limiter itll sound like shit. beeewaaaarrreeee