[Trombone-l] iPod as audio recorder [Was: Advice onMinidiskRecorders]

[Jeff Albert]

On 10/20/06, Daniel Pliskin <daniel_pliskin at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Jeff,
>
> You may be a great trombonist, but I designed mixing boards at Digidesign
> and I think that gives me the upper hand, from a technology perspective.



Then you probably know my tech friend.  His name is John Worthington.  He
and Evan Brooks are old friends, but maybe Evan left when he sold Protools
to Digidesign.  Anyway John was in that Bay Area music/tech vortex for a
while.

Had you asked your technology professor friend the right question; he would
> have given you the right answer.


I just forwarded the thread of emails.

On any mixing board, you get headroom by setting the VUs at somewhere below
> the saturation point.  On a digital system, you do the same.  On a system
> which is 48 dB cleaner than a CD, you can set the recording level at 24 dB
> down, which gives you 24 dB of headroom.  That's the advantage that 24-bit
> resolution gives you, in live recording.


Ok, so we are saying the same thing.  You are talking about where you set
zero, and the distance from there to clip.  With a higher sampling rate you
can set zero lower and get the same resolution between zero and -∞ than you
would with a lower sampling rate and a zero set relatively higher, thus
creating more headroom (distance from zero to clip).  It still doesn't mean
you can record more  sound, just that you can record the sound at a lower
gain setting, and not lose resolution.

Ok.  I am down with that.  I misunderstood your initial statement.

And that's what you lose if you record at 16 bits of resolution.  Your
> headroom audibly cuts into your resolution.


Saying it like that still seems wonky to me.  Headroom and resolution should
be unrelated.  Headroom is just a factor of where zero is set versus where
it clips.  Resolution is independent of where zero is.  But like you said, I
am a trombonist, and wanna be geek, not a full time geek.

Jeff



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