Wow, cool. Getting serious content in replies, i.e. beyond just 'get this' or 'do that', is always very appreciated. Thanks!
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FWIW: I've been thinking about this more since I made the OP and checking out what my rig's doing a little more closely. I got another show on Sunday that could have had the same problems if there had been a full house and I had had to set up at the back of the audience or if the performer used less amplification.
It was a solo singer with acoustic guitar in a small bar and I wound up going to the side of the stage. Being in a neighborhood bar I had no idea if a crowd would appear in the middle of the show, I went conservative: I set levels such that
- Three times during the show the music peaked near -11 dB
- Max applause was at -19 dB
- Most of the music peaked at -20 dB
- Quiet songs peaked at about -36 dB
- Ambient noise came in at about -63 dB
The interesting thing is for some reason I started the recorder with the gain set to 0 and got a couple of seconds of (what I assume is) just the unit's preamp noise. I analysed it and the parts I find most annoying are above 10k Hz and range from about -52 to -58 dB.
So I have an effective dynamic range of only about 50 dB and some of what I periodically record winds up using a bit more than that. Boo.
(AFAI can tell, that's really the source of my woes. The specs say a 92 dB dynamic range for line in and 65 dB for using the preamps... I can see where they get the 65 dB number. It looks like it's prolly accurate, but it just isn't *real*, know what I mean? Hmm. I bet I only have about an 80 dB range for the ADC's in there too.)
Now, if I had preamps that would give me 90+ dB I would be pretty happy for situations like Sunday. The total range of what I wanted to record was prolly 65 dB-ish. If the setup and audience had been different I could see wanting another 10+ dB. With that I could be reaching the limits of the ADC, but it would / should be so minimal I might not care. Having the option to use a little insurance would still be nice though.
I can think of one very particular situation I record in -- which would include people both 'two-finger whistling' from a couple of feet away and people nearly whispering from 50 yards -- I can definitely see wanting a limiter / compressor on top of better preamps 'cause without it I'll be running into the ADC wall.
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Thanks again, Looks like we've changed / added to my purchase list. I'll be shooting for things in an order something like this:
Get a second, smaller / newer / cheaper recorder that I can use for very low profile recording and while I'm without the PMD671, then
Get the ACM, then
Get some preamps with a built-in limiter, then (finally)
Get some nicer mics that will actually be able to use this huge dynamic range.
Then maybe I'll win the lottery.
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And, for lurkers looking for a primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression