External Instrument Recording Levels?

[bharris22]

Thanks! I would like to stay in Arrangement view while recording, but I do have CM and forgot about VPS Scope .

[spigmu]

Because your dac isn‘t... (That device which translates all that digital wonders into analog sound...)

Ah - makes sense. Thanks!

Also worth mentioning is that oftentimes a piece of gear earlier in the chain, like a mixer, is pushed too hard in the name of getting more signal into the DAW. Depending on what the gain stages are, it might be impossible to get a clean signal out of an external piece of hardware into the DAW any higher than -15 at all, which causes concern to those who think it just doesn't look right, to not even be able to get more in. But the meters on each piece of analog gear (say a mic preamp or mixer) aren't showing the same thing when they show 0 db, they're not exactly related unless you do the mental minus X compensation, and anyway, with a 24 bit recording it's not only fine but smart to not feel the need to send signal in as high as the DAW can tolerate.

The sweet spot for digital recording isn't high on the meter. When you record lower you can use the great dynamic range that is only available when there's that much room before digital zero, and not have to record with compression to reign in the loud moments. You surely can record with a compressor if you like what it does to the sound, but by recording aiming for a healthy -18, with the sudden bursts hitting around -6, you don't have to. In the analog recording days if you didn't track with a compressor you couldn't hit the tape hard enough to get a good signal to tape noise ratio. Thats all out the window now, along with half of what I learned back then : )

It seems weird to have such a low level on the digital meter to be aiming for, but it's true : )