Today I ran a very first test with my recently acquired Tascam DR-2d.
So I played a hard rock CD, put my mics in front of a speaker and turned the volume up loud (I needed ear-plugs to stay in the room - the sound at a rock show is gonna be louder thought).
My setup consists in :
DPA 4061 > SP Battery-Box (flat) > Mic-in (low) : recording level set at 68/100 (unity gain)
MM-HLSC-1 (w/4.7k mod) > Chruch Audio CA-9100 preamp cranked to the max > Line-in : recording level set at 96/100 (unity gain)
As a result, the DPAs barely reached the -21dB mark while the MM-HLSC-1s barely reached the -27dB mark.
When normalising the recordings to 99%, the listening experience is OK, but...
1. Am I not losing some crucial sound information, definition and clarity when recording at much too low levels and normalising in post ?
2. Is there a way to get a higher level while recording, especially thru the line input, because I'm already set close to the maximum gain (96/100) ?
And another question about using the Tascam : is there a way to change LINE-IN levels on the fly while recording in DUAL_LINE mode ?
I can't seem to find the answer in the user manual, so I guess the answer is "no"...
Thanks,
-fandelive