ADVC110 and audio levels

[frenchFry]

I am capturing VHS tapes through my ADVC110 including audio using RCA plugs from my JVC VCR. I am connected to my computer via Firewire.

My question is about the audio. The levels of the captured audio are quite low... In my sound editor they range between 0-30 on a scale of 0-100. It is very hard to hear when played at a reasonable volume on my computer (compared to other audio). I think I understand that the VCR is putting out line-level audio over the RCA jacks which is unamplified. Is it normal to have to boost the captured audio before using it on something like a DVD?

Thanks!

[kbosward]

No, it's not normal to have to boost the level. How does it sound when you play the tape directly to your TV?

Ken.

[frenchFry]

No, it's not normal to have to boost the level. How does it sound when you play the tape directly to your TV?

Ken.

If I play the tape on my home theater system the audio is normal. By normal I mean that I have to turn up my receiver about the same amount as I do when watching regular TV. I also tested going through the ADVC on the TV and the result was also normal.

I guess I am just confused about what I should expect to see. The waveform of the captured audio is definitely not normalized. It only ranges between 0-30 on a scale of 0-100. I had assumed this is because the captured audio is from an unamplified line-level source (the VCR).

Is there any reason not to boost the volume to a normalized level before burning to DVD?

[kbosward]

Viewing audio on a linear scale is not a good approximation of what the ear hears -- the ear hears logarithmically! Normalizing your audio to 100% will result in about 10dB gain in volume. What you are seeing does not sound unreasonable to me. The ADVC-110 is leaving plenty of headroom to avoid clipping on very loud audio.

All I can suggest is burning a representative sample to DVD (use a rewriteable DVD if your player supports it) to determine if the audio output level is okay.

Ken.