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Calibrating input levels

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Patchouli

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Someone in a recent thread posted "this is about the most useless forum I have seen" and I'm beginning to agree with him. Maybe MD is dead. If all you wanted was a music player, it is tits up. All I want is a cheap field recorder. And it looks like HiMD will fix all the stupid stuff we have to do now. Sony owes me money, damnit. I'll take it out in blood one day.

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Searching Live Recording for the word "calibrate" returns zero hits. So does "mastering" WTF? Are you people just setting your input levels to your computer sound cards on the fly? With dynamic content? You suck. :rasp: Set it and leave it. It's not adjustable. There is only one optimal position. The fact that "calibrate" doesn't come up really upsets me.

Dump a pink (or white) noise .wav to MD in the best quality possible at around -6 or -8dB. You can use many freeware sound utilities to generate signals like this. Set your MD output to be line level (or at least just flat tone and near max volume) and play it back while in record mode on whatever app you use. Set the recording mixer to get out what you put in.

If your MD is putting out 600mV, dont you think you'd want to record that? 400mV and you're leaving stuff behind (increasing noise floor), and 800mV and you're making up stuff that isn't there (increasing distortion).

Do NOT use recording levels to adjust for low recordings. Do this in software, it's much cleaner than the analog gain stage of your sound card to work in the digital world. Bah.

CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE

(now it will show up at least once.)

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