[Ardour-Users] Overdrive artifacts after export

Carlo Capocasa theman at carlocapocasa.com
Wed Sep 2 13:16:43 PDT 2009


Hey Don!

Thanks a lot for your valuable advice!

> It's possible that you're overdriving the analog electronics of the
> player. Do commercially mastered CD's cause audible artifacts under the
> same conditions on the same player?

By golly they do. I guess my question was a little silly then...

> Another possibility is that there are inter-sample peaks above 0dBFS. I
> almost always set my hard limiter to -0.1dBFS or lower, depending on the
> material. (This would also tend to reduce the likelihood of overdriving
> the player's analog stages.)

Sounds like sound advice.

> Did you use dither to get from 24/96 to 16/44.1? (Oh, there's another
> possible source of peaks over 0dBFS -- it may be that your samples were
> just hitting the limit, and dither pushed them over the edge. Not likely,
> but possible.)

I'll add this to my to-investigate list, in any case.

> Finally -- does your product really need to be that loud? Are you
> competing with commercial mixes? If so, I think the deck is stacked
> against you. There's simply no way for a small-time operator (I'm making
> assumptions here!) to compete with a commercial mastering facility that
> has millions of dollars worth of top-quality gear at their disposal. I
> urge you to consider whether "pretty close" is close enough. "Pretty
> close" is quite achievable.

Your assumption is correct.

In terms of loudness, I am not competing with other tracks in a playlist.

In terms of quality, I intend to come as close as I can and compensate
for the difference with the "human touch".

If you would like to comment on the track itself, there is a snippet
online at http://carlocapocasa.com.

Thank you!

Carlo




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