Re: Mastering with JAMin and Ardour

On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 06:46:46AM -0800, R Parker wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> --- Daniel James <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Hi Ron,
> > 
> > > So the Tap limiter at the source only limits about
> > six
> > > times during the entire piece and then for single
> > hits
> > > on the kick or snare drum.
> > 
> > I agree of course that in this example it's the
> > appropriate solution 
> > for transient peaks of over 0dBFS in the source
> > material. But in the 
> > context of a tutorial I think it's worth emphasising
> > that premature 
> > and excessive limiting wastes the sonic quality
> > advantadges of the 
> > JACK-based approach to mastering.
> 
> Definitely! I probably missed part of the point that
> you and Jack were trying to make about the head room
> of the 32 bit format.
> 
> I'm still of a mind set that says don't let inputs
> peak into the red. Even when Cold Duck was hitting the
> red there wasn't really any perceptable distortion and
> the limiter won't let our final output exceed 0.0dbfs.
> Is the reason I'm not hearing distoration at least
> partially because of the head room in the 32 bit
> format?

Yes, well, the important fact is that its floating point.

> 
> I don't understand the principles behind headroom and
> the sample depths. Anyone care to explain or point me
> to an URL. Should we plan to include this information
> in a future version of our document?

I dont know of a good page that describes it, the wikipedia entry is quite
good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point but its very technical
and not specifically related to audio.

- Steve


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