A note on digital and tape recorders

Setting up the levels on dedicated digital and tape recorders is not a dissimilar process to that on a PC or Mac. In fact, in a sense, it's easier, since many of these will not require a desk or pre-amp (in that these facilities are often part of the device). For digital recording, the point beyond which you cannot turn up your device any further is where the input sound will 'clip' - in other words, you have exceeded the pre-set levels of the device itself, and will get distortion, loss of sound, or even an audible 'pop' or 'click'. This can happen with computers too, of course, but in my experience the more control over the input sound with a desk/pre-amp that you get with computer based recording greatly increases the facility to get more sound into the machine. Plugging straight into a recording device means you are exclusively using the parameters set by the manufacturer.

(To be fair, a good standalone DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) will have quality inputs, and professional pre-amp quality. But they will be expensive.)

With tape - well, you can record till it distorts. This is one of the reasons for the warm blending of sounds on many older recordings using analogue machines.