Appendix C: An Introduction to Digital Recording
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Appendix C: An Introduction to Digital Recording
read these levels, the low noise requirements of the surrounding circuitry such as
power supplies and amplifiers would be so stringent that they would either be
impossible or too expensive to build.
In answering the second question, consider the fact that music is often compressed
or amplified after it is recorded, and that some headroom is necessary when
recording to avoid clipping. The only way that 96dB would be adequate is if all
music were recorded so that the peaks were just under full-scale and no
compression or amplification was going to be applied after recording. Any time
recorded music is amplified, so is the noise at the low end. Your Echo product has
enough dynamic range to allow sufficient headroom and post-processing to be
applied while still keeping the noise either off the recording completely or down as
far as possible.
