DR-680 Recording Levels are Low

[Barry Gribble]

Good forum... but I'd probably start a new thread instead. I will play with it a bit more and then maybe post there, and post back here if I learn anything either way.

Thanks all.

[Chad Johnson]

I suggested that thread because everyone on it will get an email with your question, rather than finding the new thread by chance. Either way you'll hopefully get an answer.

[Andrew Dean]

Heya Barry,

I just did an industrial using my dr-680. I'm very happy with the results recording 24bit @48k. The 24bit gives a lot more headroom in the event you need to gain it up. I left it at 48k since thats what I'll be cutting/delivering.

Completely unscientific, but with my meters bouncing around 80% on the dr-680, they seem to bounce around 60-70% in premier. They are within a 4-5db of as loud as I'd want them in the mix, so i'd consider what i'm getting from the dr-680 to be good.

I've had people argue both sides of this, but from advice from some taper geeks, the "input gain" on the dr680 seems to be more of a cut than a gain. Rather than introduce noise when putting it into "hi", the hi seems to be "normal" and the "low" seems to be a db cut. Based on this advice, i always keep my mic input in the "high" position and the audio quality i'm getting seems to reinforce this as good practice. All my mics are pretty high spec, and with sanken cos-11 or schoeps 641 plugged in, the sound quality i'm getting at "high" gain is phenomenally clean. If i switch to "low", i have to then crank the input all the way up and in that setting i do hear hiss and noise.

my 2c anyways. For me, 24bit 48k, high gain with phantom and limiter on... i'm extremely happy with the quality and it absolutely does not show up as flat in premier.

Cheers!

[Barry Gribble]

Great - thanks!

[Steve House]

Barry, in what software are you editing when you're seeing what appear to be levels that are too low?

[Barry Gribble]

Both FCP and Premiere.

[Chad Johnson]

I can confirm that on both the DR-680 as well as the DR-100, the "Hi" gain setting in indeed normal, and "Low" is a cut. So leave it on high unless you have such a loud source you are distorting the inputs. often when people set it to hi after hearing it at low, they hear more of everything, and think they are getting more noise. In context the files have no more noise, just more signal.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Barry Gribble

[Editing in...] Both FCP and Premiere.

I can't offer any comment regarding FCP as I've never used it, but in Premiere Pro, if you load the audio file into the timeline, display the mixer panel, and set the faders to unity gain (the zero mark, about 2/3 the way up for the channel faders and all the way at the top of the range for the master fader) for both the track and the master, and play the file, what do the meters in Premiere show as the levels? If the file was originally recorded with signal bouncing around -12dBFS on the meters in the recorder, you should see about the same levels on the meters in Premiere. What do you actually see?

Do you have any DAW software such as SoundForge, Audition, Nuendo, Wavelab, etc, where you can see what the file looks like in more detail than Premiere allows and with a level scale on the waveform display? I'm really perplexed at the anomaly you're seeing.

[Rick Reineke]

Perhaps the software is converting the files from 24 to 16 bit and altering the amplitude.

[Steve House]

I'm wondering if it's just an artifact of Premiere's timeline waveform display. When I take a rather hot music file that is clearly peaking between -6 to -4 dBFS when viewed or played in Soundbooth, Audition, or SoundForge and look at it in Premiere Pro, on playback in Premiere the levels shown on the playback meters agree with what I see in the other software but the actual waveform display on the timeline looks to be far more "conservative."

[Steve Oakley]

I'm shooting weekly using the DR-680 for sound with CMC-64 or G3's with COS-11's. What you set is what you get between PP and the 680. I'm using 48K 24bit and try to be ATLEAST at the mystery line of -12db on the meters, often coming close to the top. Unless you have very animated dialog, its not been a problem and the 680 limiters have kicked in as needed to prevent any serious distortion on peaks.

I've done 2 shoots where the PA monitoring audio let things go by a bit low, but boosting 12db or so in PP was totally clean. PP does audio in 32bit FP, so its not adding anything bad. Your mic / ambient room tone will add more then the DR-680's preamps. Busman.com has mods claiming 12db more s/n ratio, but I'd be interested in seeing real world results before spending $300 on the mod.

[Joel Guy]

I assume you guys are talking about the dotted line representing -12db, right?

I just assumed the 16 and 50 stood for negative db.