Digital Clipping?

[hottsauce_21]

I Need to know how to get rid of Digital Clipping with CED????

[Blue Bear Sound]

The only way to get rid of digital clipping is to make sure you don't clip in the first place.........

...I seem to recall mentioning this a few times to you already - but you seem to have a pretty thick head... how often do you think we'll have to repeat it this time?

[hottsauce_21]

Thick head huh? Ok care bear, whatever makes u feel good about urself.

[Blue Bear Sound]

...what a brilliant mind we have here in not-so-hottsauce_21, folks - you don't wanna miss it!

[hottsauce_21]

man u got a problem with me huh? What the hells ur problem, why EVERYTIME i write somethin, u gotta say somethin negative, WHY EVERYTIME im in the kitchen YOU IN the kitchen, EATIN up all the food, hahaha, NAH, seriously, Whats wrong with ur head?

[Jeff_D]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
[B]The only way to get rid of digital clipping is to make sure you don't clip in the first place

there's your answere.

"but wait i cant beleive thats all there is to it..." you say?-ahh- but yes its true.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by hottsauce_21
man u got a problem with me huh?

WHY EVERYTIME I give you the right answer to your question, you don't believe me and make some bullshit remark about how that couldn't possibly be, even though you wouldn't not what could possibly be, in the first place??

Idiot... open your fucking ears and your apparently-empty head and start listening to what people tell you -- especially when they give you the appropriate answer to your questions............

[mixmkr]

the new Adobe Audition does claim under their "repair area" to have the ability to fix clipped passages, along with removing pops, clicks, etc. Whether it works or not is another topic. The noise reduction set "correctly" and used SPARINGLY works well, in my opinion. The clip/pop remover is ok...., but I have not used the clip restoration feature to make a judgement on the quality of the "fix" or not.

http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/overview2.html
look under the audio restoration paragraph to see Syntrillium's(Adobe's) claim to such. If it does "work", refering back to the poster's original question, I'd take a gander at the help files and go from there.

[Jeyan]

hottsauce_21,
In Cool Edit pro I think under noise reduction you have something for clip restoration and click/pop eliminator, unless it is a mild clip it wont get rid of it, as everyone said the only way is to record without clipping, use a little compression while getting the signal in and by the way first try to respect each other in the forum, this forum is about sharing knowledge and there are a lot of experienced engineers in the forum, you dont have to respect their personality but you should respect their experience. Try to get the best knowledge out of them other than arguing with them like people in useless forums.

[voxjockey]

If I can ask a related question on this topic (in 25 words or more), I could sure use the help:

I’m recording my band in my house and am having a problem with recording our female vocalist. Her vocals sound distorted in the louder sections, yet, all recording levels are well below clip levels and the final wave showing up in Cool Edit Pro is miniscule. She ended up standing a good 4 feet from the mic and this is still true. Our male vocalist has none of this problem with the identical setup and the resulting wave implies he is recorded much hotter.
The setup is a cheapie studio mic (my son got it for free with a good sound card he bought), going into a 4-track to use the pre-amps, then into a Gina 20 break-out box and sound card into CEP software. We tried switching her to an SM58 mic which helped somewhat, but the problem is still there.
She has a very strong, lower-range (alto?) voice. Sitting there in the room as she’s singing, I would almost swear the room itself is vibrating…or maybe it’s my ear drum!!
Has anyone ever encountered this? Any suggestions? Since I don't have an external amp to power the headphones, I have to keep the CEP gains up. Is it possible that I’m saturating the A/D on the Gina card (with output) without seeing it in either the 4-track’s or Gina console monitors on input?

Thanks for you time.

[kylen]

Acknowledging that prevention during recording, mixing or pre-mastering is the best way of preventing digital distortion there are times when it happens and needs to be repaired. This skill would be called restoration in my book which is a good skill to have. Probably the best aspect is knowing what can be fixed and what is hopeless so you don't was too much in repair mode.

Both Sound Forge and Cool Edit Pro (Adobe Audition) have this feature (clip repair). I like to use Cool Edit Pros' version better and it has helped me a few times where a part couldn't be re-recorded or a track couldn't be re-mixed. In my case I got a mix where someone used Cool Edit Pro but mixed too hot and I was able to repair the track. On another track it was hopeless...

Good repairing (and knowing when to reject it!)
kylen

[mixmkr]

Vox... 4 feet away is really far away for most vocal takes. Get her up on the mic as close as you can..or at least within a foot. Use a pop filter if you have one, or if not...mic her "forehead" so her wind blasts go under the mic and not right into it. (this suggestion for the type of music I know you are trying to record). This way, you can back some levels down, because as a first guess, something is getting overloaded. You're watching your levels on your Gina mixer too, right? The small .wav file is what's confusing, however. And use that sm58, especially if you have access to it. The other mic (bless your son!!) can probably be easily overloaded too. Also...watch the trim(gain) on the portastudio too. Those preamps can overload easily also.

Sounds like you got a "wailer" in the band... ya lucky dog!!

[voxjockey]

Thanks for the info Mix.

I did an experiment today. I took the output from my Gina breakout box into my small practice amp that has a headphone out. With that, I was able to take the master gain on CEP down to -25db and let the little amp do all the work. That seemed to do the trick and solved another bunch of monitoring problems I was having as well. I still have to get our singer back over here to test it out, but the gist of it was (I think) pretty much as I stated it in my question above. The A/D converters got saturated (if that's the right word) trying to boost my Gina card output up to where you could hear it in the headphones. That peaked out at only about -1 to -3db leaving no headroom for the vocal. Even tho there was no indication of a clip on the monitor levels, it sounded distorted. Don't know if this is a correct technical explanation, but this is how it appears.

Kylen, thanks for your reply as well. I haven't tried to use the clip repair feature yet, but my plan is to try to avoid the clip repair business unless I have an otherwise flawless take with only a small area needing repair. I guess it's good to know it's there.

[quazack]

Here's a cheater's way to get rid of clipping, if it's not excessive (like, under 10 clips per song.) Search out the clip, and zoom in wicked close... then simply find the wav portion that's creating the clip, and there you go! Of course, this is a pretty sloppy way to do it. It will delete a tiny amount of the song, and that could matter.

[stuntmixer]

Clipping can usually be visually idetified by flat tops. What I have done in the past to hide bad distortion is envelope it out as much as possible and replace it with another moment from the same take or another take. It is posiible to replace single sylables if you spend enough time on it.

Sometimes, it is possible to actually get in there and redraw the clip out sample by sample by samp....

It becomes tough when distortion is not on just transients.

Best advice I have heard when tracking digitally is "let it breath". Spend more time getting the sound to cut without resorting to simple volume.