Have you read Nika\'s new paper?

posted 07-26-2003 11:02 PM *** ** ** * ** * * ** ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Several people on this site have asked when I am writing another paper on some audio related topic. A paper I recently wrote is now available online for those that are interested. You can find it at the link below: I got this link on one of the musicplayer.com pages. It's a good read and worth thinking about.

So this is why I noticed a big difference when I started tracking things not quite as hot. Digital overs are much more damaging to your audio, than not using up all your bits. So now it's "official", eh? Good, some colleagues were telling me that I was crazy to not track as close to full-scale as possible. "What, I don't hear any distortion! Look, the meters never peaked once!", they'd say...I'd say, "You hear w/ your ears, not your eyes." At least I do...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by soundboy69: So this is why I noticed a big difference when I started tracking things not quite as hot. This could certainly be one of the reasons, sure. Good, some colleagues were telling me that I was crazy to not track as close to full-scale as possible. "What, I don't hear any distortion! Look, the meters never peaked once!", they'd say...I'd say, "You hear w/ your ears, not your eyes." At least I do... Yes, the DAW is one of those areas where audio will fool the eyes. Nika.

Very interesting. Thank you for the link.

Yeah...very good read

Digi... Does the overload indicator on your interfaces indicate level post reconstruction filtering? If so, thats a good solution. Jack

I can't speak for Digi, but I'm extremely confident that Pro Tools and most other digital metering solutions measure the digital signal exactly at the DAW sees it, which is before reconstruction. Either that or we just wasted several months in development of TL MasterMeter If you look at the screenshot on our website at the level on the left is effectively reflecting exactly what Pro Tools will show you, although the scale and mechanics of our metering is slightly different to the Pro Tools meters. The level on the right is the oversampled version of the same signal (i.e. this is what the signal might look like on the far side of the DAC in a consumer CD player that does 8x oversampling). I will point out that the particular graphic shown there is (a) not an actual screenshot and (b) already out of date but the concept is the same. As Nika also mentioned, I am only aware of two other oversampling meters out there. It takes some DSP power to do this. One solution is an oversampling meter in the TC Electronics System 6000 and the other is in a mastering meter from DK Audio. Regards, Todd Trillium Lane Labs