Home The Forums Audio Student Engineering + Production Question Zone How To Gainstage and Set Levels for Cassette Tape to Digital Recording
I am recording an old tape from my tape deck. A 3.5mm cable comes out of my tape deck, where it splits into 2 separate 1/4" cables each carrying half of the stereo signal. That goes into my 2 channel M-Audio Fastrack Pro interface, which is set to line input. When playing a song with my tape deck, I have turned the tape deck volume level to a place where it is just below the clipping level on the interface, so I'm getting a nice loud signal.
Now for the settings in the computer. An audio engineer told me that I should keep all my input levels in my recording software between -10 and -18 db so that I don't introduce distortion into my mix. The problem exists in that when I gain stage the tape input in this way, it produces a very quiet final recording, and I don't really want to apply any further compression or mastering to the tape as it has already been mastered.
Should I ignore the -10 to -18 db rule in this instance, or what should I do to get the levels up? What do you guys do when you convert analog to digital?
9th May 2019 Registered UserNo pun intended but at fitst glance it sounds like you have been introduced to consumer tape recording formats.
Directed at other people,now you know why people who used like digital.
10th May 2019 Here for the gearWell I know the signal to noise ratio isn't good, but that's not what my issue is. I'm worried about distortion. How should I set my gain in the daw with this kind of setup? A sound engineer told me to set it at -12 to -18 db so that it does not distort in digital when I convert the tape to digital, but @ Murky Waters says that I can set my gain to unity. However, I thought that digital unity is at 0 db and is thus distortion and I shouldn't set it there because of that.
10th May 2019 Deleted c0657d7If it's already been mastered, it's been mastered for TAPE, not for digital, probably.
Anyway, if you really do not want to have it going thtough any processing, you could place a hardware limiter between the tape and interface, set the ceiling just under 0dBFS (-0.5dBFS?) and turn up the tape level to just not get any gain reduction.
Your audio engineer friend told you about the -18dBFS levels, assuming that you were going to use the material for mixing; I am assuming that you're not going to use it for mixing or further processing.
10th May 2019 Lives for gearNow for the settings in the computer. An audio engineer told me that I should keep all my input levels in my recording software between -10 and -18 db so that I don't introduce distortion into my mix.
You don't adjust your recording level inside the software you adjust the level on the line amps or preamps going into your converter/interface. You makes sure your converter does not go into the orange/red area.
As far as interfaces go, the only time it would ever distort is if the converter/interface is poorly built and the line amps are distorting from overloading cheap opamps, that don't saturate musically. In general any high quality converters can be pinned to slightly below 0db. As long as the converter does not clip (which would introduce digital clipping), any a level is fine in theory. I suppose this is not realistic in practice so you have to experiment. The general rule why people record at -10 to -18 is to maximize the lower dynamics of the source while allowing plenty of room to preventing louder dynamics from clipping the converter.
With recording cassette the trick is to maximize s:n ratio. You need to get the level as high as possible to eliminate the noise of the cassette and any line amp noise. You want the level high enough to get the best signal but not too high so the converter clips. So -10 to -18 is probably the best for you.