Even though all of this took place a few weeks ago, I just haven’t had an opportunity to write anything until now.  If you recall, there were potential problems with the audio at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.  I was concerned that the Digibeta dub may of had the audio recorded at too high of a level and therefore caused distortion.

A local animation studio was nice enough to allow me to come in and check the tape on their Digibeta deck.  I’m not sure they want to be mentioned, so I’ll refer to them as XYZ.   After going to XYZ and watching/listening to the dub, the audio levels were fine.  The loudest portion of the short was just bordering at 0db, which is the upper limit for digital audio.  Technically, that shouldn’t cause problems.  The editor at XYZ told me that generally it is good to have the levels at -10 or so, just to give some extra headroom, but he seemed to think that the 0db level shouldn’t be cause for distortion.   Which suggests that the problem was the equipment at the festival.  Or possibly a combination of the equipment and the audio having a very dynamic mix.  The suggestion was to make note for future projectionists that they need to be aware and check it prior to playing.  There is nothing technically wrong with the audio recording.