Low record level on qu-drive

[garyhParticipant]

This last Sunday I recorded our service from the L/R to the Qu-drive. The L/R meter was bouncing in the yellow during the loudest songs. I have read that 0db on the meters is actually -18db for headroom, but because we have music and a sermon, the sermon record level seemed extremely low (actually the whole recording level was low). Using Audacity I can boost the volume but aren’t I wasting a lot of available bits and could possibly be getting into quantization artifacts? I’m thinking next time to assign L/R to Matrix 1-2, boosting the trim gain on the matrix +10db and assigning the matrix to the Qu-drive. Will this work as expected?

Thanks

[GigaParticipant]

The L/R meter was bouncing in the yellow

On the main levelmeter or on the recordinglevel meter ? You know you can choose where to pick the signal from for recording don’t you ?

Giga

[AlanGParticipant]

Don’t forget that the recording is 24-bit, not the “standard audio” 16-bit so you have greater range in your recording.

I’ve also noticed the apparent low recording level on the 17-18 channel indicator, but I’ve put tht down to the greater 24-bit range.

It is a minor irritation that I have to convert from 24-bit to 16-bit in order to burn to CD, but I’ve never nociced qunticisation errors. I als0 normalise recording in any case, so quant-errors would show up more.

AlanG

[MarkPAmanParticipant]

You can boost the levels recorded as you suggest. you *may* find that adding some gentle overall compression to the recording is also a benefit.
Just be very careful never to send too much level to your recording, for,as you know, there’s no recovery from this once recorded, whereas boosting levels after recording is easy. With 24 it recording, “wasting a lot of available bits” is not really a problem worth worrying about.

[Alex A&HKeymaster]

Hi Garyh,

Another option would be to create a separate mix on Mix9-10 for example, and assign that mix to be recorded. This way you have a bit more control over the balance for the recording without effecting the main LR mix.

Thanks

Alex

[garyhParticipant]

Thank you all for your feedback (no pun intended). I will try the different options to find what works best for us. I’ll post back later.

[Dick ReesParticipant]

Gary…

Simultaneous recording from a live sound board is a daunting task even for professionals. The best approach, of course, is separate consoles/operators for each task.

Alex gave part of the solution. To make it really work you’d want to have someone monitoring the recording Mix as well as a person doing the live portion. How you do this depends on circumstances, availability of ept techs and (of course)…budget.

You’ll get it sorted later if not sooner. As Douglas Adams says, “DON’T PANIC”.

[garyhParticipant]

A little off topic to this post, but I just listened through the songs recorded to the thumb drive (Lexar S75 32GB USB 3.0) and one of them had a spot where 0.5 to 1 second is missing. No gap, but as if it stopped recording for that time then continued. Ruined the song. We have a portable hard drive that works okay, but seems like overkill since we’re expected to reformat a 1TB drive each time we record less than 2GB for the service.

Rant over.

[Alex A&HKeymaster]

Hi Garyh,

Unfortunately this sounds like the drive couldn’t keep up with the speed that the data is being written. Were you recording multitrack or Stereo?

Thanks

Alex

[garyhParticipant]

Hi Alex,

It was just a stereo recording. I think for recording we’ll stick with a portable hard drive and use thumb drives for scene and library storage.

Thanks

Gary

[PEJParticipant]

I use a monitor pair and still run it through a matrix for extra gain to get a decent record level and good signal to noise ratio. Before, the level was so low that the Audacity Normalize function also raised the noise.

Qu24 and AB168

[SoundEngParticipant]

Signal source, *and level* sent to Qu Drive can be changed. If recording input channels, set source to Insert Send, and then use each channel’s Trim control to set the insert level out to Qu Drive. Alternatively, set source to Direct Out (my preference), then adjust the Direct Out Trim control to increase the level
on the QuDrive.
If recording LR Masters, select pre/post option, then adjust the LR Send output patch control.
These Trim controls are found on the channel gain and LR routing screens. Check out the system block diagram at the back of the Qu Reference Guide – it’ll help you visualise the routing options.
As stated elsewhere, be careful not to set the gain too high – leave adequate headroom for unexpected peaks.

[dmizesrParticipant]

Can you specify how to do this? I’ve looked at adjusting trim on individual channels to increase level to my multitrack recording but it doesn’t seem to change anything. I’m fairly new to the QU-24 and yes, I have RT*M, but I still can’t figure it out. Any and all help appreciated.

DWM

[T J GopinathParticipant]

There is a good chance that your global direct out setting is in follow fader mode. Switch it off and your channel fader will no longer affect the direct out level. Now if you want you can increase the direct out trim to +10. Incidentally you can also switch off the follow mute so that the muted channels are also recorded

[djamParticipant]

Are we serious? We have to have a work around for something that is supposed to be a part of the operation of the unit. I know this is an older post but is there a better solution here?

Thank you in advance for any insight.

[Author]

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