Sorry for straying a bit, but I've been working with the audio volume controls in VV, and I notice that my TRV-8 camcorder can never get any quieter than about -45db on the scale. I recall from earlier days that LPs and cassettes could do about -50db, and DolbyB added 10db to that. In addition, my understanding is that 16bit audio should have a floor of about -96db (6db per bit). So my question is whether -45db is good or terrible.
The funny thing is that my live choir recordings sound terrific, and I almost never notice the camcorder noise. I am assuming that camcorder audio circuits have some sort of slow-acting dynamic range adjustment, probably combined with some kind of curve at the top to prevent any hard clipping. Is this true?
Finally, I bought the little Sony external mike (MS908C), which according to various web reports is a decent mike, especially for the money. Once again, the best it can do is produce a noise floor also at -45db on the volume scale. The character of the noise is different, however; rather than motor noise it creates what sounds pretty much like white noise. All things being equal, this kind of noise would probably be much less obvious.
I recall that there are various ways of weighting noise, in an attempt to match the response curve of the human ear. How does this affect any of the above comments?
The funny thing is that my live choir recordings sound terrific, and I almost never notice the camcorder noise. I am assuming that camcorder audio circuits have some sort of slow-acting dynamic range adjustment, probably combined with some kind of curve at the top to prevent any hard clipping. Is this true?
Finally, I bought the little Sony external mike (MS908C), which according to various web reports is a decent mike, especially for the money. Once again, the best it can do is produce a noise floor also at -45db on the volume scale. The character of the noise is different, however; rather than motor noise it creates what sounds pretty much like white noise. All things being equal, this kind of noise would probably be much less obvious.
I recall that there are various ways of weighting noise, in an attempt to match the response curve of the human ear. How does this affect any of the above comments?