Mavimao said:

I noticed that the mono sound kinda clips at times. Sounds like someone years ago did a poor job mastering the audio for 16mm optical (which has a piss poor dynamic range of about 20 dB)

I have two ways of capturing 16mm optical mono... using my Elmo 16CL or using my Eiki slimline. When capturing I set the output and input levels so that *I* am not clipping anything. However, there could be clipping in a myriad other steps I have no control over; the mechanism in home 16mm projectors for reproducing the sound is pretty crude. I also have to imagine that the process for printing the sound is also limited in accuracy by the film grain. They probably compress it sufficiently to produce good saturation and volume.

Now, you may have noticed that the level in mine never goes above about 75% of the available headroom. That's not because I clipped it there... I actually lowered the levels to that so that it wouldn't blast your speakers when switching from stereo to mono.