Question: recording live musicians / clipped audio

[The Dong]

Martin Naef wrote:
> Well, by the time software gets involved, it's already clipped - hence, 
> too late. There might be tools available that detect clipped samples and 
> make them "smooth", but I'm not sure if it sounds good enough afterwards.

It doesn't. Unless things have advanced in the signal reconstruction 
software front. Digital/SS clipping is only to be avoided.

Doesn't have to be a tube pre/limiter, but with tube pre's you might not 
even need a limiter to get a recording without nasty clipping without 
having to try and scalpel it up for hours afterwards. It will still 
distort (unless you got the levels bang on to start with) but it will be 
less of a disaster that may even be possible to improve further with 
some of the software smoothing thingies. Just speculating now..
When valves start to distort, it is gradual.
When SS starts to distort, it is sudden.

I'm pretty anal sometimes (errrmm) but even I wouldn't quarrel about 
being able to notice 10-20dB of dynamic range difference...

I can notice it badly if 5dB of that range goes into clipping on a SS 
preamp!

I'm getting annoying now :P