 |
|
|
| To understand how to set your sound levels for digitizing, it is important to know what "clipping" is because it is the one thing you must avoid. If you can visualize the example of the wave form which represents sound, clipping occurs when the top of the round wave form is clipped off so that the top is "flat." This happens which the signal is too "hot" for the equipment and it can't reproduce a sound wave of that height or amplitude. |
|
|
|
|
| Nothing sounds worse than digital sound that is clipping. When analog sound clips, it distorts, but digital sound breaks up so badly that it is completely unusable. Many capture programs will automatically stop the capture process if the sound is coming in too "hot" and clipping, but almost all will show you a meter which has a green and red zone. Go into the red zone and you're clipping. Stay too far away from clipping and you're not using all your "dynamic range." |
|
|
|
|
| Dynamic range is the spread between the quietest sound you can capture and loudest sound you can record. With digital sound, dynamic range starts with the value 1 and goes up to the highest number your bit-depth allows. Then you have clipping, because the number can't go any higher. |
|
|
|
|
| If you don't let the sound come into the digitizer "hot" or loud enough to almost clip, you're preventing the "bigger" digital values from being used. This reduces the total number of values you have to represent amplitude. If you have 16-bit sound and you only use half the dynamic range available, your system will only be using the number of values that 15-bit sound would offer. |
|
United States
(change country or region)