Audio Volume

[juicypork]

This might come off as a very stupid question for some of you, but I'm just wondering, why does your sound crack when the volume is too high? I mean it makes sense that you don't get free beers forever but I want to know the behind-the-scenes and how some audio interfaces can handle more decibels before the noise comes into your track.

Thanks.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Think of an amplifier stage as a set of three lines:
1. At the top, the maximum positive excursion
2. The middle line is silence
3. The bottom line is the maximum negative excursion

if you try and go higher than line 1 or lower than line 3, in the analog world there just isnt enough voltage in the system to handle it any further (for example) and in digital, there is just no information left to represent that value

Heres a snare drum hit, operating in the legal range

Note the clean, detailed transients.

Now here is the same snare hit, with the volume raised to exceed the range of a 16 bit plugin placed in the path

Those squared off waves, just like the squared off crap in a modern pop40 CD, is where that nasty distortion comes from

 

[juicypork]

So what's the difference between rotating that volume knob on your speaker/monitor and on your computer mixer. The speaker knobs actually have enough power to allow for that volume increase?

 

[pipelineaudio]

Check out this link in easy to digest bits

http://cara.gsu.edu/courses/MI_3110/gainstaging/gain1.htm