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Old 09-02-2013, 10:58 AM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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The -6db isn't a magic number, but it's a good idea to leave some headroom. There's no way you can pre-set record levels to be absolutely sure you'll hit 0 db when you play, and even the tiniest digital "over" is bad news. The idea that you should record as hot as possible came from the days of tape, and still permeates our subconcious. Tape had self-noise, so you needed to print as loud a signal as possible to overcome that. No such issue with digital, and you can record quite low and still have more dynamic range than you will ever need, especially for solo guitar Leaving some space allows for adding things during the mix - EQ, reverb, etc, and gives the mastering engineer (even if that's you) some room to work. Leaving some space also allows for an unexpected loud note, squeak, etc, during performance. 6db isn't even all that much space for such things. On the other hand, extremely low levels like the raw take here, are just a pain to work with, even if you technically still have enough dynamic range left. Just record with a nice healthy level, but making sure you allow for an unexpected loud note to not go over the top.