Weird Clipping...

  • Thread starter Thread starter astoebe
  • Start date Start date
A

astoebe

New member
Hopefully this isn't your typical clipping question. I recorded drum tracks in Cubase SE today, everything turned out great except the bottom snare mic (MXL 603) and one Kick Mic (Shure Beta 52A). There is a bad clipping noise on both HOWEVER, the signal is not clipping in the mixer window, nor was it clipping on my mixer preamps....what the heck? I do not understand why I'm getting this clipping. The only thing I could think of is the mic being overloaded, but I highly doubt that I could be overloading a Beta 52 (it's made for kick drums). Anyways, you Cubase masters have any ideas? 'cause I'm baffled....Thanks
 
astoebe said:
Hopefully this isn't your typical clipping question. I recorded drum tracks in Cubase SE today, everything turned out great except the bottom snare mic (MXL 603) and one Kick Mic (Shure Beta 52A). There is a bad clipping noise on both HOWEVER, the signal is not clipping in the mixer window, nor was it clipping on my mixer preamps....what the heck? I do not understand why I'm getting this clipping. The only thing I could think of is the mic being overloaded, but I highly doubt that I could be overloading a Beta 52 (it's made for kick drums). Anyways, you Cubase masters have any ideas? 'cause I'm baffled....Thanks
Click to expand...

it's not a cubase problem. almost 99.9% positive. it's either your gain staging, sound card buffer settings, or the mics. unlikely that it's the mics, so look into the othe two first. if your sound card buffer settings are too low, you can get clicks and pops which are usually kind of intermittent, not just during peaks. i'd look into your gain staging first. how do you have the mixer connected to your sound card?
 
Did you compress or EQ the tracks during the tracking phase?
 
Mixer is going through the direct outs of each channel to the M-Audio 1010 (balanced cables). I thought maybe the direct out comes before the pad, but only one of the mics was padded on the mixer. Also, It still makes no sense because the individual channels in Cubase never clipped. I am lost as to what it could be...


edit: and it's definitely a clip, not a soundcard pop

no compression or EQ...dry signal

Allen&Heath Mixer
 
astoebe said:
Mixer is going through the direct outs of each channel to the M-Audio 1010 (balanced cables). I thought maybe the direct out comes before the pad, but only one of the mics was padded on the mixer. Also, It still makes no sense because the individual channels in Cubase never clipped. I am lost as to what it could be...


edit: and it's definitely a clip, not a soundcard pop

no compression or EQ...dry signal

Allen&Heath Mixer
Click to expand...

forget the meters and just try decreasing the gain of the 1010 inputs and the mixer's pre gain and see if that helps.
 
Sounds like you might be getting mix buss distortion possibly. Are the output meters for Cubase going into the red at any point? Try backing down the volume of each individual channel by a few dB's.
 
philgood, i think you might have hit what the problem is because the output meters do hit the red....but it even does it with one track solo-ed, which doesn't really seem to make sense, because aren't you saying the mics all added to each other are making the clip? maybe i'm misunderstanding....thanks for all the help by the way
 
astoebe said:
philgood, i think you might have hit what the problem is because the output meters do hit the red....but it even does it with one track solo-ed, which doesn't really seem to make sense, because aren't you saying the mics all added to each other are making the clip? maybe i'm misunderstanding....thanks for all the help by the way
Click to expand...
Yeh, basically. It's all to do with gain structure - and I'm sure that one of the other guys on here who's a damn sight more technically minded than I am can explain it better, but basically it works something like this, afaik:

If you have a whole bunch of tracks recorded, none of which peak at more than 0dB, then your master fader (mix buss outputs) when at unity gain will never peak at over 0dB.

If, however, a couple of your tracks are peaking at over 0dB, then you're likely to be overloading the mix buss outputs, which can lead to mix buss distortion, which often manifests itself as that crappy "peaking" sound it sounds like you're getting.

...at least I think that's the theory...not sure how this works with the thing you mentioned where it's doing it with only one channel solo'ed, though. Are your output meters set to PFL (can you do that on Cubase? I've never tried). What I mean is, maybe the meters are showing the output of the whole song, - regardless of what's solo'ed.

Any help?
 
ok cool.....we are retracking drums tomorrow, i'll work with it and see if i can fix it...thanks for the help
 
Phildo said:
If you have a whole bunch of tracks recorded, none of which peak at more than 0dB, then your master fader (mix buss outputs) when at unity gain will never peak at over 0dB.
Click to expand...

I don't think that is how my cubase works....
At any rate, stay away from the red on individual channels and main buss channels alike. By the way, you can clip the bejesus out of your convertors while you you are recording drums or whatever; and when go to mix it later, if you look at the recorded channels the level will stay at or below zero. This is because your convertors can't record anything above zero; but it will try and clip and make all kinds of bad sounds instead. So you really need to have a way to monitor the level that is going directly into your convertors, and stay a few db below zero. Not sure if that helps or not..
 
It is very common to clip the master bus even though all recorded tracks are at unity and never clip. It is an additive thing. If you took 20 tracks at unity that had a maximum level of -6, your master faders would probably be well in the red.

Also, at least as far as Cubase is concerned.... Right in the manual it states that it is safe to go well above 0 on individual channels. However, it does warn to never hit 0 on groups and on master busses.
 
Right, you can go above zero on the individual channels and do little or no harm (32-bit float mixer), but just to be on the safe side with this guy...I recommend the blanket statement of "nothing hits zero". :)
 
...of course I forgot that EQ boosting can bring a sub-zero level to the point of overload, too, as can some FX processes...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top