Anyone willing to help me analyze a .wav for distortion/clipping?

H

haroldeverton

New member
This deals with the clipping on a vocal I spoke about earlier. I swear its not clipping and it could be distortion. Anyone willing to let me send them two .wav files so they can hear/see themselves? This could help me either sing further from the mic, or bring my Faders to below 0db. I don't feel like singing all of my songs over, but I might just have to. Thanks if you're willing to help.

The actual songs themselves are here: http://www.myspace.com/HaroldEverton

All the songs are copyrighted, so I'm not sweating stealing (as some of you have mentioned before). I just need a little bit of advice/help.
 
I have to reinstall Frontpage on my computer before I can post them on my server. Can I email them to you? They'll both be less than 20 sec (I know wav files can be huge).

My problem is how to monitor in headphones properly. My guess is to have the Volume knob on my Digi 001 set to Max.
 
You could just convert them to mp3 and upload them to www.lightningmp3.com. Just paste the link to the files here (the link will be emailed to you after uploading). That would allow more people to listen without the hassle of emailing the clips to everyone.
 
yeah, i think I hear the distortion you're talking about. But it almost sounds like some vinyl emulation plugin or a distortion box. Mainly because it's not a very steady distortion. Is that what you're talking about? My ears actually start hurting after listening to it for awhile.
Check all your meters for clipping (including the ones in your plugins). A lot of your stuff sounds like it's synth/loop based so it can't be any preamp (except the vocal track of course). Are you hearing this in the original files too or just on MySpace? I just wouldn't trust MySpace too much with regards to down converting your files.

nice stuff by the way. Kind of fun to listen to. :cool:
 
Hey Guys

Sorry for the delay. I will post these .wav files as MP3 sometime today and let you all know when it is up. The Vinyl simulation is purposeful. I put them there because they like the effect. Some may say this effect is overused, but it adds space and dimension to my tracks and I like the effect :).

I'm not talking about that however, I'm talking about all of my tracks seriously (even the synth stuff) going into the red all over the place compromising the quality of the tracks. This is in part my fault, but its due to Pro-Tools misleading meters.

I usually record with my Digi 001's headphone monitor vol turned ½ way up and my Mic/Line knob turned up 3/4 of the way. Doing this, I get what appears like fat waveforms being drawn, without the meters necessarily going into the red. With my headphones at ½ way volume, everything sounds great.

I did this to compensate for the fact that whenever I bounce stuff in Pro-Tools, everything seemed to come out at low volume. Which gave me the impression that I wasn't recording hot enough.

Now someone listened to my track (I'm assuming through excellent monitors) and noted that there was digital clipping all over the place. I checked with the volume all the way up and surely, everything sounded really harsh. This is confusing, beacuse when I've recorded in the past, if something was clipping or distorted, I'd hear it no matter how low I have my headphones or amp set.

Anyway, using a PAZ Analyzer in Pro-Tools, sure enough, almost every vocal track I recorded went into the red in all of my suspected points, which means, I'll have to Re-Record almost everything I've done!! :mad:

Still everything sounds excellent at pulled back volumes.
 
haroldeverton said:
I did this to compensate for the fact that whenever I bounce stuff in Pro-Tools, everything seemed to come out at low volume. Which gave me the impression that I wasn't recording hot enough.
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ah, i get what you're saying. this is your problem. You've made the same mistake everyone else here does when wondering "my mixes sound so quiet, so I just turn my tracks up to make 'em louder? But then they start clipping!"

really do some research around here about why it is that professionally recorded albums are as loud as they are. I think you'll be surprised there's a lot more that goes into it than just turning up the faders.
 
Thanks

Lol. I guess in a nutshell, yes. At least I can have comfort knowing from here on in that I should just record quiet mixes. I have 8 more tracks to do to finish my album. I'll take that approach, then go and :confused: re-record the other 6. Thanks.
 
haroldeverton said:
Lol. I guess in a nutshell, yes. At least I can have comfort knowing from here on in that I should just record quiet mixes. I have 8 more tracks to do to finish my album. I'll take that approach, then go and :confused: re-record the other 6. Thanks.
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Don't go to far the other way either. There's a recent thread about this as well. The guy was recording at -30db and had poor signal to noise ratio.
 
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