Alanfc
New member
I just spent three hours cutting and squeezing and mangling one of my projects because I had found an old thread on clipping/distortion in Cakewalk. It made reference to the Console and master fader. I got curious. I have Cakewalk Home Studio XL.
So for the first time ever (yowch !!), I clicked over to the Console view. And saw that the clipping meter was solid red in every part of my song where there was music. So I went in and did everything I needed to do on every track, in every beat of the song, to keep the master meter from peaking the red box at any time. Including re-tracking some stuff. Finally, I did it.
BUT:
Did I have to? I really should have written you all this question before that - - anyway, it turned out to be a valuable learning experience. I saw the sonic mess and piles & piles of sounds on top of each other that collectively were making that meter pop up. (My next project will have less going on thats for sure).
* All the while I never heard one speck of CLIPPING or anything.
Questions:
1. my main fader was at -3 db. If I pushed it any higher it would have given me the friggin red clipping box.
Is that a problem? Will that still be strong enough to make sample CD's and an MP3 file to test my mixes everywhere?
2. When tracking this project, I shot for the highest input without popping the red box. I've heard that that's necessary to get all my Bits. I'm doing it at 24 bit/44.1k. Since I had to back way down from 0 db on the track's faders to make all this work (like in some cases -5 db),
am I losing the resolution I worked so hard to get while tracking?
Again I never heard any clipping ever during this whole process.
3. If the master fader shows clipping but my ears don't hear it, is this going to cause me problems later? I don't know what I should do here.
Do I do what sounds right or what the meters say..Or some combo of both?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
So for the first time ever (yowch !!), I clicked over to the Console view. And saw that the clipping meter was solid red in every part of my song where there was music. So I went in and did everything I needed to do on every track, in every beat of the song, to keep the master meter from peaking the red box at any time. Including re-tracking some stuff. Finally, I did it.
BUT:
Did I have to? I really should have written you all this question before that - - anyway, it turned out to be a valuable learning experience. I saw the sonic mess and piles & piles of sounds on top of each other that collectively were making that meter pop up. (My next project will have less going on thats for sure).
* All the while I never heard one speck of CLIPPING or anything.
Questions:
1. my main fader was at -3 db. If I pushed it any higher it would have given me the friggin red clipping box.
Is that a problem? Will that still be strong enough to make sample CD's and an MP3 file to test my mixes everywhere?
2. When tracking this project, I shot for the highest input without popping the red box. I've heard that that's necessary to get all my Bits. I'm doing it at 24 bit/44.1k. Since I had to back way down from 0 db on the track's faders to make all this work (like in some cases -5 db),
am I losing the resolution I worked so hard to get while tracking?
Again I never heard any clipping ever during this whole process.
3. If the master fader shows clipping but my ears don't hear it, is this going to cause me problems later? I don't know what I should do here.
Do I do what sounds right or what the meters say..Or some combo of both?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
you'll notice the difference, so yes: it is going to cause you problems later on. When a song is silently clipping on all tracks, it sounds muddy. Fix the volumes and it opens up. Don't know the physics behind it, but that's my experience. 
)
