Why? Why not keep original volume? Would that not be the purist?
Yes, but despite the talk of purist recordings, not one in one thousand are even close to being purist. Furthermore, most people given a chance to listen to the original levels and dynamic range don't like it as much as a processed...
That has been my experience as well. What many people mean by the terms 'dynamics' and 'slam' is just *how much* of that compression/limiting is applied....
Google has far different answer. Maybe I failed to communicate, as you gave beautiful answers to different question: Why are we not pure besides levels when recording? So everything BUT the original question was answered.
I was hoping to get spoon fed the info. Oh well, I'll take one for the team & Google.
To re-word google to answer why we are not pure:
Changing levels is the best way to record. If we kept it pure bad things happen like distortion & other bad stuff.
Now Google felt a need to bring up vocals. So reworded:
Clicked both articles as that should certainly give us all the info we should ever need. Note that Google gave us Vocal specific articles either way.
The vocal specific article actually has pro terminology for exactly this question in two words:
Unity Gain
"If you record at the same level of the input, then you are recording at 0 dB, or in other words, you have unity gain."
So to re-ask the question in Audio Engineer terms:
Why is unity gain not desirable?
Answer (from vocal specific) article:
- When recording vocals you should be aiming for -18dB to -6dB. If you go any higher than -6dB you risk audio clipping.
- The range of -24dB to -6dB that was mentioned in the beginning is based on the desired signal-to-noise ratio of an audio recording produced in that range.
- The most simple rule to remember is that there is no need for a vocal recording to reach near -0.1dB as it risks audio clipping, and there is no discernible difference in sound quality from a -24dB recording up to -0.1dB."
Non vocal specific article mentions other reasons why we mess with levels that makes perfect sense:
As to why are we not pure besides levels? Engineers also has single word for it:
Mixing (as per the vocal specific article)
So to re-ask using engineer terms: Why Mix? Because it sounds great. Gotchya. Thanks!
Note that the non vocal specific article claims Mixing is required. For balance.
"Balance Is Important in Determining Decibel Levels for Vocal Recording. The reason decibel levels are important for vocal recording is because sound engineering is about achieving balance for the best aural experience"
So I am satisfied that recording levels are perfect. Yay! There is science behind it and quality doesn't suffer. What more can we want?
However, I deduced from articles an Extremely
disturbing fact about Mixing that makes a cutting edge DAC irrelevant.
The DAW. DAWS have analog stages. Audio engineers were doing so well with their communication skills with single word summaries, now they invented a word that misleads
Should have been called ADAW. DA'AW? More accurate perhaps: "ADDAADDAAD etc"
So audio signals are ping ponged AD/DA/AD, etc. No way all these devices are ASR approved. How many devices are in DAW anyway? So embedded in our source is SINBAD up the wazoo. If there was a way to test our sources through the hosts rig I betchya it'll fall in the red. If I was a betting man: low 80's. Trinnov is pro device & is in 80's. If we were smart, the host should start testing Pro devices than there is hope for an end to end working system.
