I'm about to start several recording projects after a bit of a hiatus and was hoping to get a better handle on some things this time around. This has led to a couple of questions. In case the reasons for these is unclear, I'll be recording mostly with fixed gain preamps (UA 1108 and Altec 9470) going into linear attenuators - sometimes then into compressors - into my convertors which are Metric Halo LIO8.
The two things I'd like to understand are
1) the Metric Halo software which controls the convertors and provides monitor mixing and other tools before my daw, called MIO Console which is comparable to the software that comes with most convertors, shows input levels as if they were analog, going up to +6. Why is this ? Isn't the metering already past the A to D conversion or am I actually seeing analog dbu levels here ? Does anyone know if there is a way to change this to dbfs so that I have the same 0db at the top that I see in Logic ?
2) is there a place I can specify the calibration point where +6 dbu = -18 DBfs (or whatever it is ) ? Or at least inspect it ?
The thing that is troubling me is that I'm pretty sure my preamps can go up to about +25 dbu clean, but if my monitoring only goes to +6 I can't have any visual indication that I'm at risk of clipping in the preamp before I then attenuate the output. I'm going to be recording bands and doing it all myself, so it is certainly possible I can briefly clip something and not notice it at the time, which of course I'd really like to avoid.
I could pad the inputs or move the attenuators to before the pres in order to make sure this doesn't happen, but then I would not be able to hit the output transformers hard enough to get them to sound their best, which is the whole idea with the rig.
Any advice would be appreciated. By the by, I have a few old posts here under the name teleharmonium which is associated with a dead email account. thanks, Mark
The two things I'd like to understand are
1) the Metric Halo software which controls the convertors and provides monitor mixing and other tools before my daw, called MIO Console which is comparable to the software that comes with most convertors, shows input levels as if they were analog, going up to +6. Why is this ? Isn't the metering already past the A to D conversion or am I actually seeing analog dbu levels here ? Does anyone know if there is a way to change this to dbfs so that I have the same 0db at the top that I see in Logic ?
2) is there a place I can specify the calibration point where +6 dbu = -18 DBfs (or whatever it is ) ? Or at least inspect it ?
The thing that is troubling me is that I'm pretty sure my preamps can go up to about +25 dbu clean, but if my monitoring only goes to +6 I can't have any visual indication that I'm at risk of clipping in the preamp before I then attenuate the output. I'm going to be recording bands and doing it all myself, so it is certainly possible I can briefly clip something and not notice it at the time, which of course I'd really like to avoid.
I could pad the inputs or move the attenuators to before the pres in order to make sure this doesn't happen, but then I would not be able to hit the output transformers hard enough to get them to sound their best, which is the whole idea with the rig.
Any advice would be appreciated. By the by, I have a few old posts here under the name teleharmonium which is associated with a dead email account. thanks, Mark