Mo Facta
Farts of Nature
My point was essentially that YES, digitally, signals are supposed to sound the same at any given level on paper but the reality of the matter is that at some point the signal will be either converted to digital or converted to analogue and will have to pass through an analogue stage. With recording this is doubly so because you will most likely have a front end like a mixer or multiple preamps before the inputs of the converters, which also incorporate their own analogue stage. This, essentially, is why it's important to be conscious of your levels and is why, in my opinion, converters and hardware with higher quality components and higher headroom sounds better at these levels and why budget gear falls apart. Digitally, yes, they're exactly the same but once an analogue stage is hit where voltage is concerned, levels become more critical.
My argument with ITB and plugins was that the reciprocal effect of slamming your levels within plugins (that may or may not be stable at these levels) and at the track level, while the software is technically able to handle these levels in a floating point environment, will cause overload and distortion once it his the reconstruction phase of the DA. As Massive pointed out, it's about voltage, and keeping conservative levels ensures proper voltage operation and that makes perfect sense to me. Further, to imply that we should all test each and every one of our plugins scientifically whether it's through FFT, null tests, etc, seems like something a scientist would do and audio engineers are not scientists. We are technical artists who use our ears to evaluate the technology. A processor should be selected based on it's functionality and overall sound and, I don't know about you, but I don't need a null test to tell me what sounds good. It either does, or it doesn't. Michael Schumacher does not need to know the science behind the internal combustion engine to be a good driver.
Preamps are the same story. In a digital system they are going to hand off the signal to a converter at some point and the converters' robustness to the signal will be heavily based upon it's analogue components. If these components go into distortion (which is not always immediately heard) at a few dB below clip point and it is being fed a hot signal from the preamp, the resulting sound will most certainly suffer. Of course, if this is your goal, then fine. Bob Katz talks about this at length in his Mastering Audio book. I suggest you all read it if you haven't already.
Finally, my views are wide and holistic. To me it's irrelevant to argue what will happen in a strictly digital environment because without the analogue input and output phases of the conversion process, we won't have audio. They all inter-relate. That's obvious, I know, but saying it's OK to have hot levels in a floating point environment because on paper the software can handle it without overs creates all sorts of variables that put a spanner in the workflow. Yes, the internal precision of the software can't handle it but can my plugins? Ok, let's null test them all. 10 hours later... Ok, so now what's happening at the DA? More tests.... Eventually you've wasted so much time trying to evaluate this the mix is no closer to being finished and you've wasted all your time on doing silly tests like a scientist would when you should just get on with being an audio ENGINEER.
Over and out.
Cheers
My argument with ITB and plugins was that the reciprocal effect of slamming your levels within plugins (that may or may not be stable at these levels) and at the track level, while the software is technically able to handle these levels in a floating point environment, will cause overload and distortion once it his the reconstruction phase of the DA. As Massive pointed out, it's about voltage, and keeping conservative levels ensures proper voltage operation and that makes perfect sense to me. Further, to imply that we should all test each and every one of our plugins scientifically whether it's through FFT, null tests, etc, seems like something a scientist would do and audio engineers are not scientists. We are technical artists who use our ears to evaluate the technology. A processor should be selected based on it's functionality and overall sound and, I don't know about you, but I don't need a null test to tell me what sounds good. It either does, or it doesn't. Michael Schumacher does not need to know the science behind the internal combustion engine to be a good driver.
Preamps are the same story. In a digital system they are going to hand off the signal to a converter at some point and the converters' robustness to the signal will be heavily based upon it's analogue components. If these components go into distortion (which is not always immediately heard) at a few dB below clip point and it is being fed a hot signal from the preamp, the resulting sound will most certainly suffer. Of course, if this is your goal, then fine. Bob Katz talks about this at length in his Mastering Audio book. I suggest you all read it if you haven't already.
Finally, my views are wide and holistic. To me it's irrelevant to argue what will happen in a strictly digital environment because without the analogue input and output phases of the conversion process, we won't have audio. They all inter-relate. That's obvious, I know, but saying it's OK to have hot levels in a floating point environment because on paper the software can handle it without overs creates all sorts of variables that put a spanner in the workflow. Yes, the internal precision of the software can't handle it but can my plugins? Ok, let's null test them all. 10 hours later... Ok, so now what's happening at the DA? More tests.... Eventually you've wasted so much time trying to evaluate this the mix is no closer to being finished and you've wasted all your time on doing silly tests like a scientist would when you should just get on with being an audio ENGINEER.
Over and out.
Cheers