Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

The entire signal path of the XL-7 is 24 bit.  Envision the 16 bit
samples LSB justified in 24 bit space.  The high 8 bits are headroom. 
When you add 128 of these samples, you get a 23 bit number.  When you
add in gain of up to +10dB, you can get 25 bits.  When you add in
resonance you can get even more bits.  (This is why the filters can
clip, by the way)

At no point do you lose the 16 bit precision of the original samples. 
Just because they're down at the LSB side instead of the MSB side
doesn't mean that it's in any way less quality.

That being said, if you record digitally at 16 bit, yes, you will lose
important data.  You should record at 24 bit then normalize.  This
gives the best of all worlds (maximum headroom with the full original
sample precision).

|23|22|21|20|19|18|17|16|15|14|13|12|11|10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1|0|
  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  1  1  1  1  1  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
 \__these are headroom__/ \___16 bit sample LSB justified____/

  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 \_______16 bit sample MSB justified_________/ \__USELESS!!__/

If you were to left (MSB) justify the samples, the low 8 bits would be
useless, as they'd always be zero.  All that aside, a headroom control
would still be useful for those using the S/PDIF without benefit of a
normalizer.

-Aaron

--- aeon <aeonlux@...> wrote:
> so regardless of the fact the samples are 16-bit,
> if they are at full scale and the digital output
> is not, the E-mu engine is doing gain scaling
> that cannot be overcome/compensated for by
> adjusting engine parameters.


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