Compressor

Evidently Dan cares.  I was addressing his thoughts on this when I asked him about problems with noise floor if he lowered his levels and he said : "Yes especially with stuff besides the mic and pre in the signal path or anything pushed for a sound to typical converters. I still gate and sometimes expand things."  My experience is that I've never had a problem with noise floor that my mic / mic pre / compressor / EQ didn't create.  It's never been lack of resolution or headroom of the conversion.   (I suppose I shouldn't say "never", but at this point, I can't remember a time, so.....let's call it very rarely.)


Clipping at -20?  No worries.  Then set your levels to -30.  I mean come on, we've got a theoretical -144dB of noise floor.  10dB isn't going to matter at that point.  And by all means, compress for the sound of it all.  I do.  We all do.

I just don't see how we can blame lack of limiters for clipping our A/D.  But that's my take.

Honestly, if digital PPM's were designed to show full dynamic range, we'd all be recording in the top segment of the LED array.  Instantly, we'd drop levels down.  It's as much visual as anything.  That and the hangover from analog tape.  That's my $0.02.

-144 db is the thermal noise of a resistor at 1 khz at room temperature. Raise the frequency or temperature and it goes up. All of you cool sounding but hot running class a gear will have higher noise. Your recording path will have quite a bit of thermal noise starting from the mic itself. FET and diode compressors tend to have major noise issues. Now even good stereo converters tend to have real world noise specs beneath the fudged manufacturers' specs. Your average multichannel converter will be worse. You still want to hit it fairly hot to avoid audible noise later on. Snares, proximity effect, clean guitars, and singers can be very loud and a lot of gear sounds best hit hot. Something to avoid clipping with sharp transients like the Apogee Soft Limit is very useful.

I've worked with some really dynamic musicians and singers who can surprise anyone with their ability to soundcheck at -32db and then belt out notes over zero! One can't always be prepared . . . Lord knows we try!

I don't disagree with you.  I think we are having a mis-communication.  PLEASE - drive your mic and preamp as hard as you like.  If they have the headroom you will be happy.  If not, you may get saturation you either like - or don't like.  But in any of those circumstances, there were these things on consoles called faders.    They were for lowering (or raising, but in this convo - lowering) the levels "to tape".  Or in this case to our A/D.  If your pre doesn't have an output trim, or if you don't like the sound if you turn it down, put something after it that can attenuate signal.  Problem solved.  I used to have to do that all the time with 512B's on drum overs.  I was CONSTANTLY clipping the converters.  I used an A Designs ATTY I believe to pull things down so that I NEVER - or at least very rarely - got overs.  We've got the room far below the realm of hearing here.  I'm a proponent of using it.  I see no reason to clip signals either via hardware, a limiter, or in the A/D unless doing it for CREATIVE reason.

Yeah, but politicians are even worse, over the years I have done a ton of congressional debates, both FOH & live feeds in the truck there is always a guy who whispers during sound check and screams during broadcast. Once again Aphex Dominators made me look so good. In fact it was those limiters that got from FOH to the truck!

I’m not disagreeing with Bill per say, in the studio if you have the time and are working with professionals, yeah you shouldn’t need limiters, but if you live in the world where you time is a luxury and talent level is a crapshoot linters even those on a Behringer Composer are a great house keeping tool.

Bill, you kind of inadvertently brought up a really good point and one that can be a total PITA if you’re tracking live with a mixture of pre’s. It’s not just about keeping an eye on those meter’s and “clip” lights, it’s about knowing them. I first learned this lesson at the other end, mixed racks of Amps, Crown’s idea of -3 dB before clip is different from Crest QSC and BGW! The same applies to pre’s and when you just have a “Clip” led you need to know what it means -3? -2? It’s really clipping? One of the most important lessons I learned live was to always take the time to just start soloing everything individually when you can to find the issue before it becomes a problem.

Of course you also know at times I pick on you because in most cases you are right , about how you work, but the world of the internet takes it as gospel. I hate it when I’m sitting in the bar and Someone say’s “ but DRBill ( or Thrill or Ward …) said…” and they don’t realize their situation is completely different!

You would be surprised my friend, while I realize my place as a small market celebrity you JK, Ward amongst others have achieved a certain level of audio internet legends. The problem is your average fan who has found success with much of what you preach has never ever realized all methodologies should be taken with the unstated qualifiers of “ for me” and with “ my rig”. As someone who finds their niche more and more as general problem solver I do love you guys but damn if most of these guys understood rule #3 of audio is what works great in my situation may be the absolutely worst choice for you. Life would be so much easier.

More like the small amounts of saturation that happen before full-on distortion.  Human ears LOVE small amounts of distortion.

Bill, I love noise but prefer to keep it down to not sound like Led Zeppelin II and III. The tape hiss adds to flavor in tape sims and real decks but being audible during quiet passages can be a pita.

Let’s say real world good converters are like -90 something db noise flows at 0 to +4 dbu. Average, lower than that. And not ideal measurements. Real world use cases.

A diode clipper type limiter is insurance against weird shit and can also take some peaks off if you want. Mastering guys use clipping all the time because it’s not modulation, sharp transients are close to noise, and harmonics of close to noise are also close to noise. What do you think is in a brick wall limiter? Something other than a clipper? Those Apogee and Prism converters are ass savers.

Then for the noise shit If you gainstage a wildly dynamic vocal conservatively to not clip, often you will often have to compress it 3 times: smack, limit, and level. The noise floor of the initial converter and analog gear will come into the picture here even if you use digital compressors with absurdly low 64-bit noise floors lower than the physical world if the initial gainstaging was very conservative or used some piece of shit multichannel converter loaded up.

Try to maximize the level by getting it done going in and And most of your cool sounding JFET and diode bridge compressors are going to add noise. Modern ones maybe -80 something db noise floors and makeup amplifiers will add more after its been turned down. not to factory spec or vintage design diode stuff will add a lot more. Optos a little cleaner and stuff with tubes often a little noisier than fets.

VCAs makeup by adjusting the dc voltage of the gain reduction so lower noise. They can have modern fet like noise at unity gain for the discrete ones, to ones equal to good converters at line level, to levels beneath most converters for the smart c2.

Then for what I do, those vocal and drum busses are being smashed down further with something to have them be audible against noisy high gain guitars.

The ones with two detectors for one vca or level dependent time constants for both attack and release (say certain VCA/digital/pwm compressors and faster optos hit just right) can save on noise and distortion, prevent a noise build up across gear and tracks, and you can maximize level right away going in!

LMAO!!