I have a related question....
I'm looking at my Home Recording For Musicicans For Dummies book (no hahas please). In the section for gain structuring, there is a lot of "How you set the levels is important" kinda stuff.
The prolem is, I get the impression that this section is geared towards an outboard recordist (maybe?). While there is gain staging material in the book, I am still dumbfounded.
Here's why. The way the book talks, I should be setting my preamp just below clipping and my computer at unity. Okay cool. But, shouldn't we be taking the later processing into account?
Here's an example...
mic preamp input gain (peaking at unity) to
mic preamp output gain (peaking at unity) to
recording interface (recording at unity) to
any gain adding effects.....
Or am I correct in assuming that we should not utilize the gainstaging of any faders or plugins to increase peak volume?... Is this proper conservation of headroom... Or is the headroom gone, as suggested earlier by M.E., as a result of recording at unity?
Another example...
WAV file of performance peaking at unity to
eq plug-in boosting ANYTHING to
a lowered fader to get it back down to peaking at unity...
Would I be correct in assuming that this signal chain is incorrect, due to the fact that the EQing will result in distortion before the fader ever has an effect on it?
Maybe I'm totally lost... I'm not asking for a seeing-eye-dog... Just looking for a "the door is over there" helper...
Thanks a million!
Edit: changed a biiiig mistake...