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transfer noise and recording levels

Subject: transfer noise and recording levels
From: Dan Dugan <>
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 23:29:02 -0700
John Piekos mailed me an MD and wrote to me directly:

>I dropped an MD to you w/2 min of silence, track 1.  I'm curious to
>see how much noise you find on it.

It was very quiet. Too quiet, really. I could just see the ambient
noise and preamp/mic hiss at the very bottom of the 16-bit dynamic
range, and your voice announcement didn't exceed -60 dB. If you have
been recording at this level, I suggest turning your headphones down
and your recording gain up.

The noise problem that was evident in the first recordings that you
posted is gone. I suspect that originally you had been taking the
line output of the MD recorder into a mic input on your sound card.
Am I right?

>I did re-record some of my sounds through my sound card (line in)
>which I think eliminated some (but not all) of the hum/random noise,
>(see
><http://www.johnpiekos.com/sounds>http://www.johnpiekos.com/sounds
>for the latest).

Right, these aren't noisy now, but some of the levels are low. What I
do to get a ballpark recording gain is to speak an announcement in a
normal voice and set the record gain so it's peaking around -4 dB on
the meter or so. I've found this to be a good gain for quiet
ambiences.

-Dan Dugan


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