Originally Posted by: pbarnhillLower numbers do not mean louder signal. -60 on a meter is quiter than -10 etc. 0 was a standard set in the analog days of recording. The reading on your VU meters tells you how far away you are in db from reaching the spot where audio clips. In analog you can exceed 0db on the vu meter and hit +1 +2 etc for the warm saturated sound. However with digital recordings, 0 is where "clipping" occurs. When a digital signal is clipped it becomes distorted and this happens pretty unforgivingly. Mild clipping can sometimes be hard to detect if burried in a mix but when a digital signal is clipped it usually stands out and is very harsh and not pleasing to listen to. Keep your signal hot but try not to let it clip. Have the musician play the parts and set the levels so it doesn't clip at the loudest parts of the take. They will probably play it louder than they did for you when you told them to play it loud but thats more of a murphy law thing so practice with it a bit.

If you record an acoustic guitar, for example and it has soft picking parts and real loud strumming parts, for example, set the signal for the loud part not to clip. Proper use of a compressor afterwards will bring up the quiet parts and limit the loud parts so it won't get burried by whatever else you throw in the mix.