I thought I would just follow this thread rather than continue to contribute, but I'm having trouble understanding the various viewpoints now... and we seem to have moved on to a discussion of "clipping" which different people seem to define in different ways?.
My view is: 1) getting tracks that peak at 0dB is good - but what really matters is the desired relative "energy" (perceived loudness) of the track as whole - peaks need to be studied to understand their nature - what causes them and what treatment if any do they require 2) getting tracks that clip (ie want to carry a sample value greater than 0dB but obviously can't) is bad 3) there are several ways to avoid clipping 4) It is often the case that in a track at mixdown you can end up with "a handful" of samples that would exceed 0dB if you didn't do something. If you force THOSE samples below 0dB (limit or compress them, manually or via software/hardware) the average "energy" of the track can be preserved, which is important as this track needs to be (relatively) level balanced against the other tracks and you don't want to restrict the dynamic range on the whole album just because of one track... 5)You probably won't see many tracks with the characteristics of 4 above in the wild because they will have been dealt with in mastering... 6)using digital clipping to achieve 4 is the worst/laziest way of doing it 7)It IS true that you won't hear digital clipping if it only affects a handful of sporadic samples across a track 8)The progressive limiting on the Hurt track is an artistic choice - it enables the song to build to a more intense climax before the resolution. This is NOT poor production! 9) Hotel California is a great-sounding DVD-A. The title track contains a magic moment at 3:28 where the whole track is subject to a hard -40dB fade-to-black giving the effect of "silence" - at this point the LSB's are ruthlessly exposed! Given that the snare drums are peaking at 0dB, this means that - taken as a whole - this is one of the few tracks that actually exploits nearly the full available dynamic range (actually SNR)... On a casual listen it sounds like they muted the main bus @ 3:28 - but examine that region carefully and you'll see that isn't what they did! 10) as a final experiment, I set up my two (unused) SB3's synced with their s/pdifs into 2 s/pdif inputs on my 5103. One was set too max vol, the other to vol=80. The amp inputs were then calibrated to compensate (the 5103 lets you programme gain in 1dB steps). I downsampled the Hotel California track to 24/48 with SOX. Switching between the inputs reveals no audible difference to me. Recording the output from the 5103 (via its DAC and "tape" out) and diffing them reveals an expected increase in noise floor but otherwise no difference. Even at 3:28 you can't hear the noise floor increase... So to conclude, I have no idea what you guys that insist on vol=max are hearing (or not hearing?) but I can't recreate it here. -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal... Touch(wired/XP) - TACT 2.2X (Linear PSU) + Good Vibrations S/W - MF Triplethreat(Audiocom full mods) - Linn 5103 - Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Blue Jeans Digital,Kimber Speaker & Chord Interconnect cables Kitchen Boom, Outdoors: SB Radio ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77725 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
