Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

the quality of Normalization does depend on the software that is being 
used to Normalize, and of course we all know that in the N process the 
audio takes a hit, so to a degree one has to weigh which hit they prefer - 
N or A/D.

>>>Hmmm, not sure I agree actually (though not sayig you're wrong either). 
 Normalization is a fairly simple operation, you're just adding more bits 
to the existing signal, not altering it or performing any calculation that 
could introduce truncation errors. <<<

I find myself continually more drawn to an analog re-recording of the XL7 
- and have not found noise to be an issue. 
>>>Me neither, the analog outs are certain fine, and I too use those most 
of the time. <<<

That said - depending on what DAW software is being used one should be 
able to boost the XL7 spdif signal before/during the recording.

>>>This is where you'll start to incure errors though.  Any time you raise 
the gain of a digital signal via software (ala, you raise the input fader 
in your DAW) you're performing calculations on the signal.  Truncation 
errors can occur, so the signal will not be as clean as it you had just 
recorded it straight and then normalized after the fact.  That being said, 
lets keep this all in perspective.  Truncation errors occur at roughly 
round -144dBFS in a 24 bit signal, so it's hardly likely you'd be able to 
hear them.  If nothing else, the dither added during bit reduction later 
in the process will be louder than those errors.  The issue with 
truncation errors is that it's cumulative, so the more operations you do, 
the more likely you are to hear them.  Again, these are VERY small in 
terms of how they degrade the signal quality though. <<<

I hear time and again that the optimum place to aim for in a 24 bit 
recording of individual tracks is -6 db (Bob Katz, the Metric Halo guys et 
al), for whatever that is worth.

>>>For recording individual tracks, yes I agree, you're only losing 1 bit 
of resolution in a 24 bit signal, so it's no big deal (for those that 
don't know each bit in a 24 bit signal is about 6dB of level).  My 
comments were geared ONLY towards normalization, and I used the -2dB as an 
"upper" limit.  To be honest, if I record the XL-7 digitally, I just leave 
it at around the -14dB it's typically was recorded at, and don't even 
bother to normalize. 

When I track individual instruments, I too aim for around the -6dB mark. 
Anyone interested in this geeky kind of stuff should definitely get the 
book "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz, goes into much more detail on all of 
these topics, very highly recommended. <<<

roll backward,
rEalm


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