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

--- kmusard <kmusard@...> wrote:
> I know that it is good recording practice to get the hottest signal 
> from the source without clipping to get a good singal to noise 
> ratio.  Is this required for SPDIF?  I am thinking that since the 
> connection is digital I should be able to record from the MP-7 then 
> normalize the recordings on my PC without boosting noise.

Well, you're correct in that you won't be boosting analog white noise
(as there is none in digital) but you will be boosting quantisation
noise.  However, as S/PIDF is at a much higher bit depth than most
media these days, you should be fine.  Normalizing the S/PDIF will
*always* yield quieter results than recording the analog mains because
the same digital signal that feeds the S/PDIF feeds the D/A converters
(don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure).  Therefore, all you're
doing by recording the analogs very hot is performing analog
normalization instead of diginal normalization, with unneeded D/A and
A/D stages!

-Aaron

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