My NTrack Recordings Are Distorted... Help...

[timandjes]

I've been an analog 4-track recorder for several months. Just recently, I moved into PC recording w/NTrack. At first, I just lined in some of my previous cassette recordings, ran them through a sonic maximizer, then into NTrack. I added some additional tracks and used some of the mixer and effects of NTrack and the sound quality was very good.

Yesterday, my band met and I brought along my computer. For the first time, I tried to record directly into NTrack. I ran an instrument cable into a direct box, then into a mixer, then into Ntrack. I watched my VUmeters to make sure I was in the red but not clipping. I made sure that in pc's mixer properties, only "line" was selected as the recording source.... Well, the end result was bad... Not near as clean as what came off my Tascam 4-track cassette...

Forgive my lack of proper terminology but I noticed on my cassette originated track, the timeline "picture" of the track stayed in the middle of the upper and lower limit of the track with only occasional peaks. On my direct pc recorded track, my red timeline picture of the track pretty much maxed out the upper and lower limit of the track the whole way...

So, I guess I learned that when I see the picture waves touching the top and bottom of the timeline track, that's a distorted track... How can I fix this and get a better recording?

 

[Retro]

Sounds like you are recording too hot. If the track in the wave view has flat plateaus at the peaks, then you are clipping. Digital recording is absoluting nonforgiving in regard to clipping. To solve this, reduce the level of the signal going into your sound card. BTW - what sound card are you using?

 

[charger]

In the red but not clipping? I think in the red is clipping.

 

[TimOBrien]

Yep, digital is not tape.... keep out of the red.

Record down a db or two, you can always bring it up to peak just under 0db in post-production.

 

[timandjes]

Thanks for the info... So the recording 'hot' rule belongs more to analog recording than digital? I guess I've got to get out of that analog mindset...

The VuMeter on my NTrack is green @ the bottom and red @ the top. I was recording with as much in the red as possible without the clip indicator lighting up. My soundcard isn't a real recording soundcard. It's one of the SoundBlaster series, I'm not sure which. The computer was given to me by a relative.

I am considering going to a Delta soundcard or going to a Tascam US-224. Which would be better?

 

[Retro]

Tim,

Consumer grade soundcards are going to clip earlier than cards designed specifically for recording (less headroom). Just because the clipping indicator doesn't light up ut doesn't mean you are not experiencing clipping. You need to get to know your card and at what point it will start to distort. And digital distortion (at any level) never sounds good.

 

[Retro]

If my information is correct, usb sound cards are limited to 16 bit going to the computer. The may use higher resolution (18, 20 or 24bit) AD convertors, but have to reduce the resolution as it goes to the computer because of usb limitations. I can't remember the source of this information, and, if it is wrong, someone please correct me.

 

[charger]

I don't think either of those stipulations are right.

A USB soundcard can most likely use whatever bit depth it can support. The only limitation with USB 1.x is bandwidth. There's not a lot of it to go around, so I think it would be hard to get more than, oh, maybe 4 audio channels going at a time. That's why most USB soundcards seem to be 2 in / 2 out right now.

A consumer-level soundcard is going to clip at the same point as a pro-level soundcard. 0dB is a hard limit, not something tenuous. This is one of the differences between analog and digital that people often confuse. In an analog system, on a really nice expensive analog deck/console, you can push the levels really hard, and it sounds totoally great. If you do the same thing with your Tascam 4-track, it's bound to sound distorted and not-so-great.

However, in the digital world, you basically have a 0db (or full scale) limit. Everything up to that point is represented as a fairly exact copy of the analog signal coming in (dependent, of course, on the quality of converters and components in the system). Once you go over 0dB (and this is a misnomer, since you really can't go "over" 0dB) you have reached the limit that the system can reproduce, and you begin to get fairly awful-sounding square wave distortion. So though there is more "headroom" in a 24-bit system than in a 16-bit system, since 0dB is always defined as our upper limit, that headroom really applies to the bottom of the range. this means, in essence, not that 24-bits can represent louder signals than 16-bit, but that 24-bit can represent much quieter music than 16-bit. (I think it's something like 24 bit can go down to -144dB, 16-bit can go down to -96 dB, something like that).

Hope this clears things up a little.

 

[Retro]

I stand corrected. Thanks for setting me straight on this, charger.

I did notice, on a cheap consumer card that I used before I got a MIA, that distortion could enter the signal without a clip indication in n-track. This may have been due to overloading the preamp and not overdriving the convertors. My distortion would have been analog based and not digital, then. I was using the mic in and not the line in because I didn't have any type of external preamp at the time. Using the line in and an external preamp may eliminate the problem of introducing soundcard based distortion before the point of digital clipping.

 

[banjoboy]

I use a soundblaster too, and get great results - just keep control of those recording levels!

 

[beezelbubba]

Indeed,if you haven't figured it out over the past 3 years!