Clipping?

[Bloodsoaked]

When recording should the line in be;

Only green? A bit of yellow? Allot of yellow? Some red?

Also, should I have the line in set to max and use the preamp to adjust the signal coming in? What is the best or rule of thumb for this?

Thank you...

[silentman]

My rule of thumb is that I like my peaks hitting around 0db, or as you put it, just crossing over into the yellow. If you are recording into a PC you don't want to be in the yellow a lot because digital clipping is not cool. You can get away with this a little more in the analog realm, but once you have digital clipping the track is pretty much ruined. Give your self a nice buffer there and maybe use some very light compression on the way into your sound interface, if you are using a PC. You'll be glad you tracked at a lower level during mixdown. Once again, just my two cents.

On the line in thing, if your external preamp is better than your interfaces preamp you would turn your line in preamp all the way down and use your external preamp to make adjustments. At least, that's the way I do it. You may find that you have to turn up your interface's preamp slightly to get a good signal.

-JV

[Massive Master]

Full-scale is WAY too loud - Your signal should be riding around *0dBVU* which is in the neighborhood of -18dBFS.

Before anybody says anything - This isn't anything new. This is how the system was designed to run. This is the way it's been done "downtown" since the advent of digital recording - Even in 16-bit.

Your analog gear is designed to run at 0dBVU - That's the "sweet spot" that basically all non-digital gear is happy at. If you're driving that signal 12 to 18dB hotter than it was meant to run, do you honestly think it's going to sound right? Of course not.

I don't know where the "record as close to full-scale" thing ever started, but I'd sure hope that people's common sense overrides that obvious bunch of crap.

Track conservatively - MIX conservatively.

If you're going to use up all your headroom anyway (most do in the mastering phase) use it up ONCE - Not at every possible opportunity. Your recordings will likely sound SOOOOOOO much better and SO much clearer with SO much more detail, you'll be wondering what you were thinking.