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Originally Posted by ashcat_lt
I think that if you're advising anybody to do anything other than use proper gain staging in the analog realm and let the digital levels fall where they may, then you're kind of wasting everybody's time.
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The definition of "proper" being the devil in the details, here. Regardless, I certainly don't plan to go on a mission admonishing people to record as hot as possible. What I'm on about is the parade of posts in forums that say "you're recording more than -18 dBFS RMS peaks? That's the problem with your kick drum/guitar/mix/stereo serparation/punch/high-end/whatever... record lower and everything will change for you."
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I'm trying to figure out how to do this test that you propose in any meaningful way, but it's tough to do without adding more variables to the equation...
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I think the easiest may be to use a mixer, send a mono signal in, and send it out two outputs that you can adjust the balance between... adjust the overall level and the balance such that one goes to -18 dBFS RMS and the other to just under clipping (analog or digital), and go into inputs in your interface that are at unity gain (or which lack gain knobs). If you worry that individual deviations in the two outputs from the mixer or the inputs into the interface might confound things, repeat the test after switching the routing up. Or just use a splitter cable and mult to the inputs and gain one down?
Record, normalize, and render (preserving 24bit, ideally).
Sound good, or am i overlooking something? Did you see the test I posted in the other thread? Was it not meaningful due to some mistake I didn't think of?