Noob audio question

[painted_klown]

Hello everyone. I have a quick noob question regarding audio.

While reading the ROTF thread I noticed several people talking about listening to their systems at reference or near reference level.

What is the standard for "reference" level?

In the recording world it is whatever your tape machine is calibrated to. +3db, +6db, ect...After your machine is calibrated you then purchase tape to match that machines calibration, thus that calibrated db level (of the machine) is equivilant to 0db.

After that you just use the meters (on the tape machine) to see how hard you are hitting the tape (with an audio signal) and go with the level of saturation that works best for the machine, the tape your using, your gear, the specific project, ect...a lot of guys like to hit the tape pretty hard to reduce the noise floor and when tape gets hits hard and the machine still has some headroom it will slightly compress the signal making it sound extremely pleasant, and easier to work with in a mix.