Headroom

Headroom is the amount of space you have above your audio level before it "clips", or can't go any louder. If you go above this point, your sound is distorted, and most likely useless.
 
Would increasing the samplerate in a sequencing program such as FL studio or reason provide more headroom?
 
There is talk that you can achieve more head room by exporting your tracks from FL/Reason into another program such as cubase,pro tools, sonar, nuendo, ect. Is this true?
 
Headroom would be defined by the bit resolution (eg. 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit), although directly converting between these isn't going to give you more headroom.

Just make sure when you record stuff, it isn't peaking. That's all.
 
Does your CPU effect headroom at all other than bit resolution? Like will a faster CPU help give you more headroom or it something that's purely related to the physics behind how sound travels/behaves?
 
Yup. . . LOL
 
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xtraclip.com said:
Yup. . . LOL

Could you expand upon that a little saying yup and lol doesn't exactly tell me anything and doesn't even really tell me what your saying yup to since I asked two things it could be mean A) It will limit the amount of headroom you have or B) Headroom is physics of sound itself somehow. I'm trying to get a better understanding of how headroom works, things to improve it, and things effecting it if any.
 
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).
 
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 ****.
 
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).

Thanks for the response Massive and breakdown of it so all a better cpu will do is basically allow me to run more tracking and effects simutaniously without having to export to a wav first in order to reduce cpu usage correct? If that's the case I'll wait on cpu/mobo upgrade awhile longer to get a better bang for my buck and get something else instead in the mean while like one of those bcd2000's I've had my eye on for awhile.

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 ****.

Nice metaphor I think I get it now the thing I'm more confused on now is if you leave headroom how do you boost the loudness or perceived loudness with the availible headroom. Like what seperates mixing from mastering I guess is what I'm trying to ask?
 
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They're two completely different things -

And no doubt, over the last decade or so (okay, maybe a little longer) the trend has been to use up as much headroom as possible during the mastering phase. As much as it sucks and makes things sound horrible, it's life right now.

But the better sounding mixes usually have plenty of headroom at every single possible step before the mastering phase. Once you use up your headroom, it's gone - forever. No getting it back. Track too hot, it's gone. Turning it down after the fact doesn't bring it back. Max out an aux or a group, start over.

I can only think of one time in the last decade that a project came in with *too much* headroom - And that was a summing error. But I can catalog dozens - HUNDREDS - of projects - Thousands of tracks - that have come in with too little.
 
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...
 
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...

The bass example made a lot more sense of the two, but I think I more or less get it I'll have to experiment with it a bit on my own of course some to make sure I fully grasp it and become better at leaving/leveraging headroom. The bass example seems a lot more like leveraging extra headroom than leaving it, but I guess you could call leaving it the same thing either way regardless of the method involved.

So cutting/lowering unessary/extra frequencies is going to allow more headroom similar to the way lower the volume faders does as well?
 
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.
 
MASSIVE Mastering said:
But I can catalog dozens - HUNDREDS - of projects - Thousands of tracks - that have come in with too little.

And those would be the albums that sound like somone has hit the loudness button on your stereo - Sounds nice until you listen on a proper system then you hear the crackly noises inside the actual recording.

If I'm grasping this correctly then headroom is about keeping the peaks high but not high enough to smack them off the roof, right?
 
Those are the albums that sound distorted, small, unfocused.

Headroom is about leaving enough room for the gear to run properly.

Headroom is *NOT* about "recording hot but without clipping."
 
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.

Do you mean by that? Like do you mean for example if I have a piano and drum track and set the headroom on them each say -6db on the drums and -7db on the piano then mix the two together I can't go back later and adjust the individual tracks without recording over again to fix it?

It's a little different with software of course because you can save file states and fix your mistakes fairly easily as long as you don't need to record live over again. That's one of the added pro's to software vs hardware isn't it, but hardware is more hands on.
 
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