RE: OT: Re: FLASH: sound recording?

[Marc Hoffman]

At 10:40 AM 3/17/99 -0500, you wrote:

>Make sure under your systems sound recording properties you don't have the

>microphone's GAIN set to anything higher than 1.


I'd like to chime in on this one.  It is true that in digital recording,

having your signal too loud is a lot worse than having it be too soft. The

distortion that results from too hot an input can be really nasty.


However, it is a mistake to think that because a sound is digital it can be

recorded soft and then amplified with no loss of quality. The lower the

signal, the less dynamic range and so you're effectively limiting the

bit-rate (the range of numbers used to represent the audio voltage in each

sample).  This may or may not be evident in web applications, but it will

certainly show up in a downloaded .wav of .aiff file or in an audio file

that is part of a CD presentation.


Even more importantly, virtually every piece of audio equipment has some

inherent noise, which tends to remain at a constant level.  The louder your

music signal, the better signal-to-noise ratio you will attain. Using

software to reduce noise after-the-fact is quite costly compared to

starting with a decent mic and a used Mackie 1202 mixer.


With less expensive sound cards (including the SoundBlaster) the mic inputs

generally use cheap preamps and that is why using a line source (a mic fed

through a mixer or stand-alone mic preamp) is almost always preferable to

plugging a mic directly into a sound card. Mackies are good.  Beware of

many PA mixers that generate lots of noise (sound for music clubs is not

nearly as demanding as sound for recording purposes).



Marc Hoffman

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