Not hearing clipping??

[Re-tox_stl]

So whenever I go to record drums. On my overheads I have the gain all the way down and a -10db pad on each sdc, but on my daw it shows that the signal is clipping. When I listen to the track though, it sounds perfectly fine. Any one know whats up?

Much love, Drew

 

[mixsit]

Short duration spikes, and/or if they arn't extending very far past zero, and it depends on who is clipping'. In a drum mix could be a likely guess it mostly the snare? Look how often we end up limiting this stuff anyway. In this case it's apt to be part of the sound de jour', so we're already ok with that..
Etc..

 

[grimtraveller]

This happens to me from time to time. When I'm setting levels before a session, I'll ask whoever's playing drums to whack each component that's miked as hard as they can and then I set each preamp so there's no clipping. Then I'll get them to play the whole kit ferociously and turn everything down a fraction, just to make sure. But once the session has been tracked, every now and then, I'll notice the odd quick spike of clipping. It often surprizes me because I listen to the playback first and I don't notice anything amiss. I know what that awful digital clip sounds like and I don't ever want to hear it again ! So I don't worry at the odd clip if it isn't messing with the sound.

 

[Lt. Bob]

Yeah, not all spikes will cause an audible distortion.
In fact it surprises me how often they don't.
When it does it's nasty sounding so if you're not hearing anything bad, don't worry about it although I'd tweak the settings to get it where it doesn't spike anymore.