proper audio levels

[Barry Green]

Yes the levels should head into the red.

On the DVX, the transition from white to red happens at -12dB. If you never let it go into the red, you’d be wasting all that dynamic range headroom from 0 to 12dB. Of course, you don’t want it to go too far into the red; you’ve got six dots available (each dot represents 2dB) and your audio will sound great right until it smacks into that sixth dot; at that point it’s clipped and distorted. So keep some free headroom, but use the red. Three dots into the red will give you peak levels at -6dB.

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[David Battistella]

Barry,

This is a very interesting approach. Many of the sound recordists I have worked with have wanted the peaks to be just around hitting only the firat red. The common thing is to set the tones at about -18 db or three dots below the first red peak.

I know that the DVX’s audio recording capability is comprable to the best DAT recorders but the arguement has always been the Digital sources need more headroom than analog because clipping is so much more pronounced in Digital recordings.

Interesting to see that it can be ridden much “hotter” than I have in the past.

David

Peace and Love 🙂

[Barry Green]

All I’m saying is go into it with your eyes open, and allocate as much headroom as you think you’ll need. Each red dot represents 2dB of volume, so if you stay completely out of the red, you’re limiting your maximum volume to 1/4 of what the system could be recording if you used all the dynamic range.

—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)

[David Battistella]

Cool.

That is very helpful and very useful information.

Thanks,

david

Peace and Love 🙂