Suggested VU level parameters when recording with DBX noise reduction engaged?

gentlejohn

gentlejohn

New member
Hi! Apologies for asking the following real basic questions here but .... I've been reading a fair bit about setting VU levels when tracking & what to aim for. I have to admit, I've gotten a bit confused! When folks state: 'Hit the tape hard' what does that mean exactly? I'm supposing this is so you get a better signal-to-noise ratio (or saturation if that's what you're going for right?) but what kind of VU levels are we actually talking in order to 'hit the tape'? Also would I be correct in thinking that this procedure doesn't work if you're recording with Noise Reduction (in my case DBX) engaged as, with DBX on, you should try not to go over 0dB on the VU meters right? Conversely, when tracking what's the lowest level? Is -3dB a good rule of thumb? PS: Again, apologies for the basic questions but I need to clear this in my mind as it's pretty essential to get this clear from the outset & find a method. Thanks in advance for you input here!
 
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It depends on what format of tape deck you're talking about when it comes to hitting the tape hard with no noise reduction on. Open reel decks tend to have more headroom both on the tape and in the preamps that feed it. Hitting a cassette format hard is never a good idea as the electronics will kack out before the tape does and cause ugly IM distortion which will mask most of the sweeter sounding harmonic distortion and tape compression.

As for when the dbx is engaged, forget about attempting tape saturation effects all together and aim for the -7 to -3 Vu levels to keep things clean and noise free.

Cheers! :)
 
Hey there... what I do when I'm recording w/ dbx is to first disengage DBX and see how hot the signal is without it... if you're peaking at -3 to 0 then you should be fine once you turn DBX back on. This is to mitigate the artifacting caused by DBX NR because it's a process based on compression + expansion.

As far as how hot to record the DBX encoded signal, the general rules apply. On my Tascam 34B set to a +6 operating level and using ATR tape, peaks up to of +1 are fine and I don't get DBX anomalies when decoding the recorded signal.

These are parameters that work for *my* machine, so you'll need to experiment and see what works for you on yours.
 
It all depends for my 388. I usually record with the dbx on. I have tracks that go well into the red and some stay there for the duration of the song. And I don't get any weird artifacts from the dbx. Just try recording a couple of tracks that are pretty hot and see how your 388 handles it.
 
I agree with the previous comment... yeah, just experiment and see what works best for your equipment and for the track you're recording at that particular moment...
 
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