digital clipping? pumping tracks way past 0dB?

T

thecugga

New member
Im curious as to what it going on here?
to get my snare loud enough alot of times i crank it up like +8dB (in my recording program ... which is sonar 4 PE) and sometimes it'll reach almost +10dB and i wont hear any distortion or "popping" or anything at all.
Its clearly clipping ... so is it digitally removing the peaks of the waveforms? Can the gain be cranked that much on a track like snare without any degradation?

I feel like this is probably degrading the sound alot and it is bad practice to increase a tracks volume in this method

I am going to stop talking since I clearly dont know whats going on and I dont want to risk further confusing anyone.

recap: crank the gain on a snare track in cakewalk til it hits close to +10dB with no audible distortion. What is actually going on here? Why cant I hear the clipping? Is this good or bad practice?

Thanks
 
as i sit here pondering whether or not im completely retarted for posting this (which is why i posted it in the newbie forum in the first place) ive come up with another possibility.

could it be that the snare attack hits too quickly and so it only clips for a fraction of a second and only a very small amount of the waveform is clipped? therefore it isnt very noticeable until it gets too loud and clips a larger part of the waveform?
which could also be why this works with fast kick

am i close?

if this is true and it is actually clipping, but it just isnt noticeable, am I ok to crank a snare track past 0dB or should I stay away from doing this and stick to limiting at 0dB?

Thanks
 
How are you cranking it? What is going up past 0db? Are you just pushing the fader up 10db or is a meter telling you the signal is up at +10?
 
yeah i'll record it at decent levels, usually stayign a few dBs below 0 ... then usually my snare will get lost in the mix so i'll turn up the gain fader to lets use an arbitrary number; +10dB.
then the tracks meter will read that it is hitting lets say +8dB.

definitely clipping ... but it sounds fine ... no audible distortion. seems like i am increasing the volume with no downside ... although i find the "no downside" part a little hard to believe ... which is what im trying to find out before i record something else

thanks for the reply by the way
 
Are you clipping the main output?

If your snare is peaking around 0db and it's getting lost in the mix, everything else is too loud...turn it down.
 
You can do that in the mixer (there is extra headroom there) but not at the final hardware output.
Wayne
 
mixsit said:
You can do that in the mixer (there is extra headroom there) but not at the final hardware output.
Wayne
Click to expand...

Yeah. 32 bit float allows for you to go "over" like this.

You are also on to something when you asked about the clipping being too short lived. Yes, it takes around 8-12 samples of continuous clipping before there is audible distortion. So, you could clip your converters, but if it is for less than say 12 samples in a row, you won't hear any distortion.
 
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