setting correct levels for your digital audio recording
Digital audio recording is a bit different than what you read about in the history books about tape saturation and overloading your pre-amplifiers. Today, digital audio is not so lenient towards overload and digital clipping is one of the worst sounds an audio engineer can hear.
In the old days, engineers liked pushing their levels to saturation to get that warm tape sound. But now, the only thing you accomplish by pushing digital audio to the max is horrible digital clipping.
A good way to achieve nice sounding analog saturation is to use analog preamps before you send your audio into the digital world. Another way to get a similar result is to use various saturation plug-ins that emulate that warm tape sound.
No clipping please
Now, with digital audio
recording we have to record at an optimum level without distorting our
preamps, causing that horrible clipping. When you are getting levels
into your DAW, whether that's Logic, Pro-Tools, Cubase or any other
program make sure you are getting a good enough level to record with
before it clips.
A nice rule of thumb is to record the loudest part of the signal at around 3/4 before you reach 0dB. So when setting levels, make sure your audio is being recorded like in the area shown in the picture. That way you have your audio at the most optimum level before overloading.
24 bit recording
Also, make sure you are recording at 24 bit since it will give you much more headroom than recording at 16 bit. With 24 bit recording the signal to noise ratio is much higher and you can effectively record at lower levels without introducing too much noise into your signal.
Conclusion
By setting your levels correctly you can avoid a few problems in the mixing phase. You avoid that pesky digital clipping that ruins your audio completely, and by recording at 24 bit you have enough volume and headroom to play around with without the noise floor posing a problem to your recordings.
Check out some digital audio recording software here
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