Automating the optimal record level settings

[UKTim]

Is there a plug-in, or has anybody considered developing, an Audacity feature that would allow either a 'recording preview phase' or perhaps the selection or a representative region of some captured audio as a means to optimise and set the input recording levels. I am capturing from some old vinyl and 1/4 inch tape recordings.

Does Audacity have any headroom allowance or is 0dB the clipping level?

Any suggestions?

Tim

[steve]

0 dB is 0 dB. There is no additional headroom.

If you click on the recording meter, the meter is activated so that you can set the level before you start recording.
By default the recording and playback meters are very small, but you can click and drag them to full screen width, which makes them much easier to read.

[UKTim]

0 dB is 0 dB. There is no additional headroom.

ok, understood, thanks Steve. I've been using my large vertical meters as best as I can. If I can make the gain slider large too I can accurately see the change in attenuation as I slide it. Poss with a small mod here.

Thinking about it, if I write a plug, which as a software dev I may well quite soon as I need specific silence detection tool that triggers on 10mS+ of digital silence (null sequence) from an S/PDIF source. This is for splitting tracks from a digital recorder where each track mark generates a short null sequence in the stream.

Tim