Does this matter? Waveforms................

R

RAMI

Guest
I've been wondering about this for a while now, but never knew how to ask the question. Then, I realized that the best way would be to do a couple of screenshots.

Until a few months ago, my snare and bass drum hits in my overhead tracks were well defined, square shapes, easy to line up if I needed to etc......

Starting a few months ago, I noticed that they're a lot more blurry and less defined. I don't think it's affecting anything other than how it looks, but maybe there's a reason for it. Anyone have an explanation?

Here are the 2 screen shots. First one is an older track. You see where I circled the bass drum hit in my overheads, it's a very well defined square with corners. The second one is more recent and is less defined, more blurry.

Wut be dat all about?
 

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Ah shit, the shots don't fit in my screen unless I make the page size a lot smaller. Let me know if you can't see the circled hits, or just make your page smaller, they're there.
 
I can see most of the circled stuff....but man, I would think you don't want squared off waves.
Honestly...I've never seen that in any of my audio waveforms...unless I really overload the input and get clipping.

Is that how yours always look...square at the top?
What DAW app is that...I can't read the top line.

OK...I see Greg is seeing it the same way.
It just doesn't look right square.
 
No, it's not clipped. I just made the waveform as big as possible. It's nowhere near clipping.

Like I said, I made the screenshot too big. If you slide the bar at the bottom of the actual post with the screenshots, you'll see where I circled the bass drum hits. Or, just smallerize the page and you'll see it.
 
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They're not clipping, guys. Those tracks are probably coming in at about -14 at most. Come on, you guys know that the view in REAPER can be increased and doesn't mean anything.
 
Wait...is it maybe that you just have the vertical waveform zoomed in, and that's why it's squared off...but at normal view it's not...?
 
RAMI said:
They're not clipping, guys. Those tracks are probably coming in at about -14 at most. Come on, you guys know that the view in REAPER can be increased and doesn't mean anything.
Click to expand...

OK...you just answered what I was asking.

So then when you have it zoomed in like that...how are you distinguishing between "well defined" looking and not well defined?

Not being a BBer...can you post the two with nornal view instead of zoomed.
 
I can post with a more normal view, but do you not see the difference? Look at the circles. One has a thin, square waveform. The other has a squiggly, blurry waveform. That's really all I'm concerned with. My levels are fine.
 
Yes...totally see the difference.
Just saying that since your question is about the look of the waveforms...maybe a more normal size view might help to answer your question.
In my own DAW, I can size up the waveform vertically like that too...but I honestly never do (I just zoom into it)...so it's hard for me to give you a clear answer if one is more normal looking than the other when they are over-sized like that. :)
 
Yeah no, making the waveform smaller just makes it harder to see the difference between the 2.Making the view extra big the way I posted allows us to really see the difference between the 2 waveforms. I'm just really curious to know why there's a difference. Looks as if the "blurry" one is shaking or something, but I doubt that.
 
OK...obvious question....did you do anything different on the bottom one when recording?

With the waveform sized up that much....it kinda looks like some form of digital jitter....???
And if that (or something else wrong) is causing the squiggly line...then yeah, it's not good.
 
miroslav said:
OK...obvious question....did you do anything different on the bottom one when recording?

With the waveform sized up that much....it kinda looks like some form of digital jitter....???
Click to expand...
That's what I'm thinking, but it's a hard one to answer. I didn't notice it at a specific time. I just accidentally noticed it a few months ago when I loaded up an older tune and took a look at the drum track. So, yes, there's a good chance I changed something, somewhere by that time. But not something that I can specifically remember, and not something major.
 
If anyone out there knows how to take a screenshot of my screenshots, make them smaller, and post what we should be looking at, I'd really appreciate that. It took me about 27 minutes to figure out the 2 screenshots I uploaded. I'm not going to attempt to re-size them.
 
Did you, by chance, create the older Project with an older version of Reaper? I seem to remember there was an option in the preferences to change the waveform view. Can't find it now in the latest release. Maybe the Project has retained the settings from an old Reaper version.

Try copy a file from the Project to somewhere else on your computer and importing the file into a New Project and see if it looks the same or if it is like a normal waveform. It should build a new .rpf file and the waveform will probably look normal.
 
RAMI said:
If anyone out there knows how to take a screenshot of my screenshots, make them smaller, and post what we should be looking at, I'd really appreciate that. It took me about 27 minutes to figure out the 2 screenshots I uploaded. I'm not going to attempt to re-size them.
Click to expand...

If you are using Win 7.....use the Snipping Tool in the Accessories folder instead of doing whole screen shots.

The Snipping Tool lets you pick only a portion of your screen to turn into an image.
 
Thanx guys. Mr. Clean's on it. Much appreciated.

And Clean also figured out the problem. I can't believe it, man, you're a genius. That's all it was. I opened a older tune with the square, defined waveforms, copied the overhead track, and then pasted it into a new project. Sure enough, it got squiggly, but sounded the same. I guess what I thought was "blurry" and "squiggly" is really just a more detailed waveform, kind of like higher resolution. That's awesome. Learn something new every frickin' day. Thanx man.

Thanx guys.

Eu-fucking-reka!
 
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