"Clip Audio Mix Upon Overflow"

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mark4man

mark4man

MoonMix Studios
In Cakewalk (or in Sonar, for that matter), how does the advanced option "Clip Audio Mix Upon Overflow" work?

A) Is it esentially a limiter? How is the signal processed in order to prevent clipping?

B) Is it active for all audio playback, or does it only work during mixdown/bounce (or record)?

Thanks in advance.

mark4man
 
its a limiter in that it chops of the overflow so that your speakers don't spit out digital overflow noises.

it is not a limiter to be used for maximizing your sound. for that you need the Waves L1 or something to that effect.
 
crosstudio,

Thanks, man. That's the best response I received (from any of the boards.)

I ran across a "sort of" explaination in the Cake User's Guide...which says the function clips every mixed output sample, as opposed to letting them "wrap" or "overflow", which also creates a "warmer" type of distortion.

Not that I profess to know exactly what that means; but it is in keeping with what you said. I would like to find out more about overflow, just to know what's happening with the signal directly above & below 0dB. I keep thinking it's got to be relative to all that extra headroom that comes with high-end processing...24 bit; & the like. If you know of any good informationals, let me know.

On the loudness maximizers, I was going to try & get Wave Hammer, which I believe is a plug-in from Sonic Foundry. I'll let you know how that works out.

Thanks again.

mark4man
 
just to know what's happening with the signal directly above & below 0dB
Click to expand...
Technically, there is nothing above 0 dB, that's why signals "over" 0 dB are clipped. For 16-bit audio the scale is from - 96dB to 0 dB, for 24 bit it's from -144 dB to 0 dB.

And yes, WaveHammer is a plugin from Sonic Foundry. Is it sold seperate, or only bundeled with SoundForge? I thought it was the last option.
 
in analog, you can get that warm distortion.

the tape saturation that comes from overflowing the transients allows analog mastering to get a louder sound average.

in digital there is nothing over 0. if you go over 0, you're screwed. so while normalizing would get your loudest peak to 0, the digital world couldn't get that analog loudness.

that's where maximizers such as the Waves L1 come into play. look ahead limiters that allow you to boost the input, and then cut the signal off just short of 0, when the input goes over 0. it doesn't quite have the same "warmth" because the peaks are cut off rather than just overdriven the way that tape is.
 
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