How hot should I record?

[Veit Renn]

Owning a studio, I see a lot of different sessions come in that are recorded too hot, and rarely too low. Its even worse with ProTools sessions recorded on an LE system . I narrowed it down to the metering in each software. Logics meters seem to only show signal in the middle of the meter even ifyou are already within the -10 db to 0 db area, were ProTools HD meters are much more accurate and half means half.

Ever since the digital recording started, there has been the discussion about getting a the highest quality , bit rate and sample rate when recorded as close as possible to 0db. I'm sure there is some scientific explanation and reasoning, but audbile it is not! Period. I prefer vocals cut under half way of the meter in Logic, because I need headroom for my plugins like eq ,which can easily add 3-5 db to your output signal just by adding frequencies.
In Protools you can get pretty close to the uper quarter of the meter, but when I open sessions recorded in LE in Protools HD, files that were finr in LE are showing overloads....Interesting, right. So my tip just stay at least 4db under 0....

My rule of thumb for Logic users: Record under half meter level. You can always pump it up later, but if its distorting its over.... Its the one thing you CAN NOT FIX!..

By the way this counts double for recording guitars and other instruments

[brad catron]

VEIT,

THANKS FOR THAT YOU KNOW I ALWAYS RECORD A LITTLE TOO HOT..

BZILLA