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Original Message

don't record hot in digital

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr on March 24, 2012 at 21:07:33:

With analog, clipping is generally soft the first few dBs and gets progressively harsh as you get past the saturation point. In digital, there is no "gray area" saturation point -- only hard and nasty clipping after the "bit bucket" is full.

However, the fact is that some DACs process the signal in such a way that it is best that they not be fed a signal hotter than -3dB. At that point, it seems they will reach 0dB internally and a recorded signal above the -3dB point actually causes problems for the D-A converter. This applies to PCM. For DSD recording, I believe the max signal recorded should be no higher than -6dB (due to a similar reason).

There is a discussion at computeraudiophile.com (a few recording people contributed in the thread -- Barry Diament, Cookie Marenco and maybe a few others) re: the subject of recording levels in digital. Somewhere here at AA, I believe it was Christine Tham -- a few years ago -- brought up this subject because she was hearing what sounded like clipping from some of her discs, yet they were not "clipped" in the recording: they were (just) below 0dB.

I'm sure a search here and there will bring up relevant info.