Hi all,

I have a metering question. Suppose I am doing field recording with a
portable DAT (e.g., SONY TCD-D100, TASCAM DA-P1, etc.) and a mic preamp
(e.g., Shure fp23) that DOES NOT have any visual metering, such as VU.
Let's say, I input a 1KHz tone at 6 dBu to the preamp to try to
calibrate the preamp and the DAT recorder. The question is, how do I
set up the gain on the preamp and the DAT? I want to get -12 dB on the
DAT with the 1KHz tone.

Thanks for your help!

Bartek

What you WANT to do is find where the mic pre CLIPS.
6dB down from THERE is where you should set your recorder level to hit
0dBfs.

You then set field levels according to what you find in the field.



On 5/4/05 7:10 PM, in article
, "photoBSP"
wrote:

Hi all,

I have a metering question. Suppose I am doing field recording with a
portable DAT (e.g., SONY TCD-D100, TASCAM DA-P1, etc.) and a mic preamp
(e.g., Shure fp23) that DOES NOT have any visual metering, such as VU.
Let's say, I input a 1KHz tone at 6 dBu to the preamp to try to
calibrate the preamp and the DAT recorder. The question is, how do I
set up the gain on the preamp and the DAT? I want to get -12 dB on the
DAT with the 1KHz tone.

Thanks for your help!

Bartek

"photoBSP" wrote ...
I have a metering question. Suppose I am doing field recording
with a portable DAT (e.g., SONY TCD-D100, TASCAM DA-P1,
etc.) and a mic preamp (e.g., Shure fp23) that DOES NOT have
any visual metering, such as VU.

Exactly which of these does (or does not) have metering? Your sentence
structure leaves your statement of conditions very ambiguous.

Let's say, I input a 1KHz tone at 6 dBu to the preamp

You are putting +6dBu into the input of a mic preamp?
You wanna try that again? If you have +6dBu, you don't need
a preamp to amplify it, you more likely need a pad to attenuate it.

to try to
calibrate the preamp and the DAT recorder. The question is, how do I
set up the gain on the preamp and the DAT? I want to get -12 dB on the
DAT with the 1KHz tone.

Are you saying that you want to characterize the clipping point of your
mic preamp? What do you have available in terms of test equipment,
computer, etc?