Guitar clipping... help

[GJtribute]

I'm fairly new to the recording world and today I was laying down a few guitar tracks on pro-tools and it was working fine. When I finished recording all the tracks I had 3 or 4 guitars playing in sync at certain times. When a single guitar track was played alone it wouldn't clip at all, but when the 3 or 4 tracks were played together the sound meter would clip. I tried playing around with the volume adjustments but the only way I could reduce the clip is to make it at a very low volume. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this or what Im doing wrong. Thanks

 

[Dani Pace]

What you are experiencing is commonly referred to as "no headroom." The signals of the tracks combine together (accumulate) and create what appears to be a much stronger signal. The simple thing to do is to lower the volume levels of the tracks (on the sections which clip, not on the entire track) until the peaks (combined) more closely resemble the single track peaks in other parts of the song. You might only have to lower the track sections a little or you may have to lower them a lot, depending on how bad the clip problem is. You might lower all the (guitar) tracks except one to eliminate the clip and still retain the full sound. This way you have one track as the "primary" and the others as "backing" tracks to round out the sound.

 

[Minion]

Depending on your setup you might be recording your signal to Hot, I usually record at -24DB so most of my tracks only peak at maybe -10db so i don"t get any Clipping......

the Volume is Low on Playback but that can all be Fixed in Mixdown and Mastering....It is better to have a Signal that is too cold than too Hot....

 

[THX1136]

How did you have the tracks panned? Two reasonably recorded tracks level wise panned up the center will put you in the red easily without reducing the individual tracks levels. It's the physical nature of things. It's like your ears when listening to heaphones. This will give you a 6 dB increase in perceived loudness. Take one cup off and it drops by that amount in both ears. Simliar type of thing with the tracks.