How much headroom when sampling drums??

The topic pretty much says it all. How much headroom do u leave when sampling drums into the mpc? Do you sample as hot as possible or leave a little headroom?

Also when tracking into the computer how much headroom should I leave? I usually leave 3db is that the norm or should I have more head room??

Depends on the MPC, and the sounds you are going for.

The earlier MPCs handled an input overdriven past max level on the input meter, without digital clipping, and that overdrive/distortion is part of the MPC sound for some users.

Not sure how your MPC4000 would handle a similarly hot signal.

...with actual converters it makes no deeper sense anymore to drive them hot....

it simply does'nt add anything "nice" to the sound anymore....

with 24 bit converters you don't have to worry for not enough signal....but too much is always a problem anyway, if you're not into styles that ask for 12 bit overdrive....

with 16 bit converters you still should take care of not to much and not enough and you're doin' pretty fine with roundabout 3 db of headroom....

and if you track out end of the day, the normalize function is your friend....at least for bumms and tschaks.....

i gain hot in the dj mixer and leave around 3 squares of headroom in the record for the mpc

I'm not really a fan of the internal MPC metering system for the recording stage. How can you have a meter on a professional audio product without numerical information??
I personally use a pair of Dorrough 40-C2 loudness monitor meters. This has been calibrated to measure input signal of my MPC 1000.

I generally record levels around -10 to -5 DBFS or below in the MPC. I have the option to record into a DAW via an interface at 24bit. The advantage of 24 bit is higher head-room. The MPC 1000 is 16 bit.

When I sample in I like to get the signal loud but still "nice" to my ears. Since the MPC 1K doesn't have very great metering, it's all ears for me. Once I find the right "loud" level, I back off the record gain a hair or two (or fader/volume on instrument/etc).

I have no clue why I do this beyond the fact I conditioned myself when I was in school, first starting to record into Pro Tools. It helped my signal sound clearer at the end of the day because I allowed myself some room to mix upward.

Guess just keep in mind what you're sampling. If you have a dusty record with a ton of hiss leaving too much head room on the way in can lead to headaches once you start mixing/compressing things. Your compressor will grab that just about better than anything else if you're not careful.



TLDR; if you're sampling from a VERY CLEAN source, you can afford to leave yourself a ton of room.

with digital recording i think you want the highest point of your input signal to be slightly more than the loudest point of the instrument dynamically, leaving as much room as possible below for softer dynamics while also making sure that, at it's loudest point, the instrument level will not exceed the threshold level and clip.
but with analog recording you might actually exceed the threshold as a tactic to get a particular sound. with digital you have to create that sound artificially in post. i'm not sure which mpc's are considered analog or digital or both.

dmarz45 wrote:The topic pretty much says it all. How much headroom do u leave when sampling drums into the mpc? Do you sample as hot as possible or leave a little headroom?

Also when tracking into the computer how much headroom should I leave? I usually leave 3db is that the norm or should I have more head room??

I think the way you do is the proper way, so I don't think it can't go wrong with your way.

But then I sample drum break from vinyl on my MPC-2000XL, sometimes I intentionally let crip snares a little bit, to see if it sounds good. sometimes I get a good result. Note that I monitor sound from analog out on MPC.
I wouldn't do that if I'm on DAW.

Depends.
Sometimes clipping the sampler input sounds good, to varying degrees, and depending on sampler, but with some sounds it doesn't. In that case record hot without clipping... obv.
Used for effect rather than a lesson in perfect laboratory sound management, clipping allows you to get the input sound to be different and louder at the expense of distortion. Whether that distortion sounds good, bad or whatever depends on how hot and in which sampler you do it. It's a technique and another creative tool. I like a bit of light clipping on some sounds with the S950, S1000 and MPC3000 for example.

A loud kick or snare might benefit from some nice MPC 3000 light clipping, but hats generally don't. Some hot sounds sound really good with the FZ-1 but some sounds really distort badly.
Depends on what sounds you sample and what sound ur after.

But the MPC 2500 really farts at you if you overdo the clipping... which is not good.
Suck and see with your machines and use your ears.

We're talking about individual sounds here and once sampled you can then drop the level of the individual sounds (clipped or clean) in the overall mix.

No golden rule. Find ur own path and sound.

I record into my computer at around -4dB or so.... probably.... it changes.. then I don't have to worry too much about spikes. But I tend to do processing on my live mix before it goes into my computer anyway.