xtraclip.com said:Yup. . . LOL
MASSIVE Mastering said:The CPU has nothing to do with it. Although you could attribute the term "headroom" to your CPU's power with your demands vs. what it *could* handle.
But usually, we're talking about the difference between a nominal signal and the failure of the circuit.
Lots and lots of headroom = good thing.
Not enough headroom at the input chain = Really bad thing.
Not enough headroom once digitized = Not a big deal to some extent.
Too much headroom = Almost impossible. Especially in 24-bit.
The short story - Digital headroom is a very simplistic thing. You get an "A" or a "F." The signal is either below full scale or it's breached full scale. Analog is another story - A signal is either somewhere around where the gear is meant to run ("A") or way too short (B), or a bit too hot (B), even hotter (C), much too hot (approaching digital full-scale - "D") or clipping ("F" - Usually considerably hotter than full-scale).
ameoba said:If you think about digital audio, it's just a bunch of numbers representing sound levels from 0 to some number (about 65000 for 16-bit) - alternately you could use signed numbers (-32000 to +32000), the difference isn't really important. "Clipping" occurs when you try to record something that has a level outside this range - if you've worked with synthesis a bit, think of the difference between a sine wave and a square wave - the harder you clip a sine wave, the close it is to a square wave (which has a -very- different sound).
If you like metaphors, digital audio is like a pipe with the signal as water flowing through it. If you're running as much water through a pipe as it can handle and somebody flushes an extra toilet, the pipe can't take it and you're left with a bunch of ****.
Nito_Prod said:I'll give it a go for a simple explanation.
Let's say you mix your track. Start with the kick. Let the kick level reach about 2/3 of the full UV meter on the mixer. Then mix in the other channels. Now...your music would probably seem very low if you just bounced this file down, burned it to a cd and let it rip at a friends party. By restricting your kick (this applies for dancemusic, and modern music of that genre) to 2/3 of it's level your providing some headroom by not letting it go all the way to full level. When you mix in the other elements and your kick is maxxed out you're likely to distort your signal.
I guess you could look at it like audiophysics in some way.
Another example. You can't hear the really low rumbling bass frequencies, cause it's not audible to the human ear. Though it will eat up the much spoken headroom for the basschannel/s. By cutting everything below atleast 30Hz (up to 60-80kHz) your giving your bass more headroom to work with in the mixer and general mix. More leeway if you will. If you're gonna make sure your tracks has some headroom to work with you'll fall back on the mains output of your mix after you're done mixing it, and for gods saken don't kill the leeway with a maximiser...
MASSIVE Mastering said:But I can catalog dozens - HUNDREDS - of projects - Thousands of tracks - that have come in with too little.
MASSIVE Mastering said:To some extent, it can - But keep in mind that there's a big difference between mixing headroom and tracking headroom. Mixing headroom you can change after the fact (by adjusting the mix). Tracking headroom, you only have one shot at.