Hey Everyone.
This will apply mainly to guys with analog desks and summers, but where is everyone calibrating their converters to equal +4dBu? I ask because in the last few weeks I've been installing several new desks or converters for clients and it's always a nightmare trying to settle on the best headroom in digital world and also in analog world. This afternoon, in fact, I'm going to look at a client's studio who has two rooms that aren't translating between them. They like to mix and pre-mix stuff in both but need to be able to swap between the rooms. For them I'm going to see where their main room is set and then cal the secondary room to match. For HD guys I've sort of settled on -18dBfs but that can be too hot if they're primarily mixing other people's tracks and have no control over the level that was recorded. On my personal rig, 002 with LE 8, it's not adjustable and is fixed at -12dBfs, which sucks for hitting the desk and staying in the sweet spot between noise and maximum digital levels.
I'm starting to write up a little primer on converter calibration to hopefully be able to explain the reasoning behind it to clients. So far it's just a very stream of consciousness thing, but I'll get it condensed and easily understandable eventually. I also want to include something about having converters that at least sort of match showing up next to each other on the feeds to the desk. A few years back I had a client that was complaining he couldn't phase null channels 9-16 on his SSL with the 32 other channels. His normal tech had looked at it for about 2 days before giving up and what it turned out to be was they ran out of their 192s and just threw in something else that was putting out about 2dB hotter of a signal and also about 15ms later. The solution there was to move it down to the last 8 channels of the desk.
I guess this also applies to studios using hardware inserts and mixing in the box. Need the input level to match the output across all the converters.
Anyways, I am just curious to see if everyone is still in the -18dBfs range or if you've found that most need their outputs a bit quieter and can give up that average/peak headroom.
This will apply mainly to guys with analog desks and summers, but where is everyone calibrating their converters to equal +4dBu? I ask because in the last few weeks I've been installing several new desks or converters for clients and it's always a nightmare trying to settle on the best headroom in digital world and also in analog world. This afternoon, in fact, I'm going to look at a client's studio who has two rooms that aren't translating between them. They like to mix and pre-mix stuff in both but need to be able to swap between the rooms. For them I'm going to see where their main room is set and then cal the secondary room to match. For HD guys I've sort of settled on -18dBfs but that can be too hot if they're primarily mixing other people's tracks and have no control over the level that was recorded. On my personal rig, 002 with LE 8, it's not adjustable and is fixed at -12dBfs, which sucks for hitting the desk and staying in the sweet spot between noise and maximum digital levels.
I'm starting to write up a little primer on converter calibration to hopefully be able to explain the reasoning behind it to clients. So far it's just a very stream of consciousness thing, but I'll get it condensed and easily understandable eventually. I also want to include something about having converters that at least sort of match showing up next to each other on the feeds to the desk. A few years back I had a client that was complaining he couldn't phase null channels 9-16 on his SSL with the 32 other channels. His normal tech had looked at it for about 2 days before giving up and what it turned out to be was they ran out of their 192s and just threw in something else that was putting out about 2dB hotter of a signal and also about 15ms later. The solution there was to move it down to the last 8 channels of the desk.
I guess this also applies to studios using hardware inserts and mixing in the box. Need the input level to match the output across all the converters.
Anyways, I am just curious to see if everyone is still in the -18dBfs range or if you've found that most need their outputs a bit quieter and can give up that average/peak headroom.