Adventures In Audio

The noisy truth about your DAW: An ear-opening investigation

Learn how to become a better producer in your own home recording studio >>

Comments on this video

You can comment on this video at YouTube

Gunther Mampaey:  You should consider to change to Reaper, the stock Trim plugin goes from -150 to +150 dbfs. For recorded tracks that have noise in it, or ground loops in a guitar amp, we use a gate. Like the XLA-3 compressor, we can add noise, or a tape plugin. Which are very good these days.

Tachy Bunker:  32-bit float has a range of 1,528 dB's. If you were in space, you would hear things louder than 32-bit noise floor 😂

SonicSaviour YouWillNotGetMyName:  what is the reason? Internal 64bit processing, I presume?

Emlizardo:  You had me at Marianas Trench.

Diego Gutiérrez:  Can you make a video about aliasing, saturation and compression? Problems and tips about it?

Paul J:  Eric Idle strikes again :)
Jokes aside, excellent series and quite enjoyable presentation !

Mikexception:  Volume controll with digital do not involve any very low digital signals but only specified numbers for very low DA output. DA noise exists anyway but is not being recorded, only is each time created from scratch from digital data. so in digital recording at level -135 nowhere is recorded any -135dB by volume electrical signal - it is recorded with full standard voltage. hat is why I am not surprised by conclusions.


Sensation of "sound of silence" may be experienced also in -50dB analog level Because in my case I always or almost always hear sound layer from neighbours in the same block, from street which i very quiet but birds sing, fly, my computer working and my ears ringing. The level of perceived silence s too loud to hear any noise at -50dB which is generaly considered not great for analog.

In the DAW:  This was amazing

Herbst:  Hey, im here to tell you, yes a video about gain staging would be great! - > in my case, a guitar ; )

Alej:  A+ for the james cameron reference. Cheeky bastard 😂

William Palminteri:  The test proves nothing about system noise floors.
Obviously your DAW preserves the original 0 dB signal and recalls it.
Try recording a sine wave from an external signal source at -138 dB, then normalize it to 0 dB and we'll see what's what.
Bill P.

Ferocious Mullet:  1 bit = 6.06dB so you're reducing it by 23bit = 139.38dB. Not exactly 139dB you are then adding 139.38dB back giving you an extra 0.76dB which is probably being rounded down to 0.6dB by the display. So the discrepancy is valid, the amount of error being shown is slightly low due to I feel a lack of precision in the scaling on the display. Those bars are only 0.2dB in precision, so it's rounding down to 0.6 not up to 0.8 would be my guess.

dreamscuba:  Very interesting topic and experiment. Thanks

Christopher Ward:  That was a great demo. I thought the signal would come back with some grunge from the noise floor.

Thorsten Ørts:  The wonders of floating-point arithmetic.

bestdisco1979:  I seriously don’t get gain staging. Surely you need need enough gain to sufficiently feed your plugin chain , if I try the unity gain thing I don’t seem to have enough and end up with some faders way down low. Where am I going wrong ?

Thomas Shea:  very good ---- video on gainstaging would be great

intheblink:  I really appreciate your approach! Great work! Analog is great and all and sometimes a little noise is nice, but it can be such a pain to deal with. Thank goodness we have such incredible tools to deal with it these days.

The Noise Floor A/V:  Thank you for publishing accurate info

Self-Law:  Thanks Paul.

You can comment on this video at YouTube

Thursday April 20, 2023

Like, follow, and comment on this article at Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or the social network of your choice.

David Mellor

David Mellor

David Mellor is CEO and Course Director of Audio Masterclass. David has designed courses in audio education and training since 1986 and is the publisher and principal writer of Adventures In Audio.

Audio Masterclass gives you all the technical knowledge and skills to bring your musical dreams to life

The Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course

Get the most from your studio with the Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course.

Get your FREE TRIAL...

Learn Pro Tools with our amazing range of video courses

Pro Tools video course catalog

Browse Pro Tools courses...

Learn Logic Pro with our amazing range of video courses

Logic Pro video course catalog

Browse Logic Pro courses...

Learn Cubase with our amazing range of video courses

Cubase video course catalog

Browse Cubase courses...

Audio Masterclass gives you all the technical knowledge and skills to bring your musical dreams to life

The Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course

Get the most from your studio with the Audio Masterclass Music Production and Sound Engineering Course.

Learn more...

More from Adventures In Audio...

The noisy truth about your DAW: An ear-opening investigation

CD vs. 24-bit streaming - Sound of the past vs. sound of the future (Turntable tips)

When plugins fail - The sad and costly truth

VIDEO: How much do you want to add real tube magic to your DAW? (Features Freqtube FT-1)

Add real tube magic to your DAW with the Freqtube FT-1

Unleash your creativity with the Taiga: The ultimate paraphonic modular synthesizer

From flat to fabulous: Transforming your audio with parametric EQ

What is saturation? (It's not what you think it is)

Why is the Neumann U47 considered the best microphone ever made?

Why should you learn pro audio?

When recording vocals, should you always be the same distance from the mic?

SoundBite: Does compressor attack time work above the threshold?

SoundBite: An introduction to decibels

SoundBite: Panning effects with filters

SoundBite: Put an end to clipping with the 32-bit float WAV file format

SoundBite: Left-right stereo to MS and back again

SoundBite: Gated reverb on snare from scratch

A stereo microphone - Should you want one? What can you do with it?

The EQ unwanted resonance trick - Is it wrong?

How to set the shortest attack time in your compressor

How to make your masters louder, even though streaming platforms don't allow it

Why the Tascam TM-82 dynamic microphone does not have an on/off switch

What buffer size setting should you use in your DAW?

Why you should (or should not) upgrade to an Apple Mac Studio