Headroom

Hardware questions and issues with the FV-1

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bdoan
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Headroom

Post by bdoan »

How much headroom do you suggest for the FV-1?

What p-p input value will clip the ADC?

What sort of gain (loss) do you expect from most effect patches?
frank
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Post by frank »

These questions are difficult to answer as they can depend on the algorithm you are running. The max input is about 3Vp-p so you should target 6db below that to have some headroom.

There is no way to say how much gain/loss is expected from any given patch. Every program is different so all you can do is write it and adjust levels as necessary. Many people adjust levels in programs for no gain/loss so when they switch programs there is no big changes in volume.
Frank Thomson
Experimental Noize
bdoan
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Post by bdoan »

Can you recommend any analog compressor/limiter circuits that will work from a single 3.3v supply?
gfisys
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Post by gfisys »

bdoan wrote:Can you recommend any analog compressor/limiter circuits that will work from a single 3.3v supply?
If your goal is to compress the signal (and expand later) before it hits the FV-1 there's no use running the compression circuitry from 3.3V as it'll suffer the same headroom limitation. Run it from 9V instead and adjust the compression such that the output signal stays within 3Vpp.
bdoan
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Post by bdoan »

So if I run an analog limiter to protect the input of the FV-1, and I limit to 3Vp-p, can I ignore the 6db headroom rule?
gfisys
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Post by gfisys »

bdoan wrote:So if I run an analog limiter to protect the input of the FV-1, and I limit to 3Vp-p, can I ignore the 6db headroom rule?
Not sure what you mean by '6db headroom rule', but a compander does help (to some degree) to overcome the headroom limitation.
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