Vinyl LP Digitization - USB and Bit Depth

[Al Stu]

The standard practice is to shoot-for -3 to -6dB, leaving plenty of headroom. You don't really need headroom... Nothing bad happens when you get close to 0dB but you'll get clipping if you "try" to go over and analog levels are always unpredictable. (Pros typically record at -12 to -18dB.)

-6db is giving up about half the available resolution (1 bit). Maybe not so significant for 24-bit as there is still 23-bits of resolution. But reducing 16-bit resolution to 15 is more significant. For 24-bit or greater I'd probably be more lenient. -3 to -6db would be no big deal.

For digitizing audio that has already been tamed, vinyl for instance, at 16-bit resolution, I shoot for peak better than -2db without clipping. Utilize as much of the available resolution as possible.

Pros typically do this... is meaningless without context (live performance, studio recording session, etc.). Here we are dealing with tamed audio (professionally mass produced vinyl). -12 to -18db would just be silly for this purpose.

If you are old enough to remember analog tape, you wanted a hot signal to overcome tape noise, and tape tends to soft-clip so it was OK to go occasionally "into the red". With digital there is no tape noise and it will hard-clip if you "try" to go over 0dB.

Hot signal to tape was about the inherent media noise (tape hiss). Not the upstream signal path noise.

Though digital does not have that inherent media noise, the principle to apply gain early as possible in the analog signal path still applies, to avoid including noise unnecessarily in the recording. Regardless of the recording media.