How often do you receive clipped tracks for mastering?

triviul

New member
I'm interested to find out how often any mastering engineers on this board find themselves receiving clipped files from their clients.
1% ?
10% ?
100% ? :)

And has any client ever insisted that you master from a clipped file even when you've queried it with them? If so, what reasons did they give?
 
18.7%. Somewhere around there.

Yes.

"That's the mix and we can't change it because the engineer was a doucebag." (or something along those lines) is the usual answer.
 
Closer to 1%

Of those I don't send things back unless it is audibly distorted because of the clipping.

The only time I send stuff back is if there is a discussion where the client ask for a critique or I know without a doubt that the mix will benefit with a change and I feel the client is open to that.
 
Not that often really. Maybe 1 in 30 roughly.
Of course I always ask them if they have an unclipped version and most of the time they don't.

G
 
haha it blows my mind that anyone would deliver a mix to a mastering house with no dynamic range to work with.
A lot of the time, they don't even realize it. They're given the mixes from the studio (and Gawd knows that a lot of engineers don't want to be seen as "giving out quiet mixes" or they convince the band of some sort of "using all the bits" BS so they pre-crush them to some extent).

Then there are others that don't understand that just because the red light doesn't come on doesn't mean it isn't clipped...

And of course -- Some mixes come in with obvious clipping by measurement (meters, waveform, etc.), but sound perfectly fine. Other mixes that appear to have dynamic range can be terribly damaged dynamically.
 
I have recieved track files for me to mix clipped all the way through, whats more they arrive as mp3's and they have not got a wav file as they worked in mp3 in their home studio.

However the best one was the album I mastered that sounded good, it was light instrumantal Jazz. A few weeks later I heard it on the radio and it sounded very strange, I thought the radio presenter was playing it to air too loud and clipping the limiter on the transmitter. However when I talked to the artist a bit later he said "The master you did for me was not loud enough, so I put it back into my computer and turned it up", by this he meant that he adjusted the volume up so that it was in the red, heavy clipped all the way through. :facepalm:

Alan.
 
witzendoz,
that's a classic! Too much technology in too many hands. Light jazz in the louness wars!! I hope it didn't credit you as the ME.
 
quite unfortunate - it happens all the time
I also noticed many mixers do clipping on purpose during mixdown - often to achieve 'loudness' at this stage.
If re-mix is impossible - you have to work with material which is not perfect.
Well it's not always a piece of cake job...
 
no clipped mix since maybe 2 years now.

lucky you!
I have mastered a great quality jazzy recording (with modern vibe) and great mix,
and it was clipped on bounce and then turned down on digital export to be below -0.1dB
it was uber loud -
my thoughts are - people (mixers, engineers) do this on purpose, as this is partial outcome of 'loudness war'
- make a mix uber loud before even mastered
 
yeah I get this quite a lot, say 20-30% percent of tracks. Theres far too many people who dont understand the process and think it can be fixed magically. I will always try and feedback to the client that if possible they should re-export the track at lower levels to give me room to work. I'll be putting up some guidelines for submitting tracks to a mastering house on my website soon.

Dynamics always wins over loud- a well recorded/mixed and mastered record that preserves dynamics should make the listener turn up the volume anyway :)
 
I think it has to do a lot with a clients you are aiming for,
in my case - I am in the low budget, hence no D.Bowie or Deftones knocking at my door:)...
it's a lot of ppl who making first steps, and I spend a lot of time explaining basic things - well that's partially my role
help folks to understand what they really need,
sometimes they need proper mixing or...tuning vocal performance at first - and mastering simply wouldn't help
 
Around 2 years ago I would say it was around 15pct now this has reduced significantly to less than 5pct.
If you include heavily limited files it used to be 25pct and now it's 7pct (approx lol) I have included massive information on my website and people now appear to read and understand it and deliver accordingly. This saves a lot of time.

SafeandSound
stem mastering
online mastering
 
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