How much clipping is acceptable?

[muckypup1]

Well?

On everything I have been doing recently I have been making sure to keep everything just under full blast, I use Reaper, and I always make sure that nothing gets into the red bar's when I render my finished songs. But yesterday I tested out how it would sound having it a bit louder, and although quite a lot of the song was in the red bar, it sounded better to me, everything sounded more furious and filthy!

My question is, should I let my shit get into the red bar, or should I make sure to keep it quiet enough so it doesn't reach the red?

 

[Ermz]

Listen to Hypocrisy's 'Virus' for your answer

 

[slashvanyoung]

It depends on the actual audible clipping. The bar will hit the red even if you have one drum hit/transient that will push it over but you're not going to notice that.

There's no rule... most people won't even find "Virus" or "Death Magnetic" bothering because they simply have no ear for that.

I'll usually leave the master at least 1 db under the point when the clipping gets really audible.

 

[muckypup1]

^^ What I have been doing is keeping everything quiet enough so NO clipping comes, even from one loud drum hit, I will test out keeping things louder soon!

 

[kev]

I wonder what the average person shaves off using gclip

 

[John_C]

Myself, if i can hear audible clipping artifacts, it's too much clipping. I'm talking about master bus clipping here, using gclip or another clipping plugin.
Masters where i can here audible clipping is a pet hate of mine, i can put up with a mix that's slammed with comps and limiters, but if i can hear that nasty crackling, buzzing distortion it fuckin' pisses me off

 

[jval]

sometimes you can get away with tons of clipping... like shaving off 6db peaks without hearing it. when I get masters back they are pegged in the red with hardly any audible distortion.
just use your ears.. if it sounds BAD, then it's probably too much.

 

[slashvanyoung]

Overly squashed and fatiguing mix/masters don't help either.

 

[Metaltastic]

Overly squashed and fatiguing mix/masters don't help either.

And clipping isn't necessarily a requirement for either of those qualities either!

 

[slashvanyoung]

Quite the truth, sadly.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

It really depends, it's best to mix really low in volume then on mastering you have enough headroom to push things, I sometimes clip about 6 dbs in total (normally 2 instances of gclip) but it REALLY depends on the souce material, on the mix shape, frequency balance etc, every mix is different so you have to see what needs to be done. Dont ever let anything go into "red", I dont even let drum transients reach it and it's supposedly "ok", but I always feel like it shaves off a bit of quality on the say snare drum, although percussion transients aren't really susceptible to audible clipping compared to other harmonic transients such as guitars.

 

[Melodeath]

I allow (but avoid) clipping on tracks, but none on the master bus. B/c clipping on the tracks doesn't matter with 64 bit float processing.

 

[Sacha]

I allow (but avoid) clipping on tracks, but none on the master bus. B/c clipping on the tracks doesn't matter with 64 bit float processing.

But don't you have to go down to 16 bit eventually?

Anyway I pretty much detest audible digital clipping, but its also seems pretty much unavoidable at modern loudness levels.

 

[Melodeath]

As long as your master isn't clipping (and the plugins you use support 64 bit floating internal processing) then it wont be clipped. 64 bit shifts the scale of the quantization levels so nothing is really clipping. The "red" in the DAW is actually an indication of if it will clip in lower bit depths when you export

Try it. Get a track and severely distort it using the volume on the track. Then bring the master down until it's not clipping. Export. Check the waveform - there wont be any "squared-off" waves.

 

[dani]

even a 32bit float wont clip. numbers stored in floating point are in "standard form", in values between 1 and -1. any floating point number can actually store a number greater than 1 or -1, so no clipping actually occurs. above and below these values will clip when mixed down, because in an audio file, values are stored from -32767 to 32768.

you can't write a value higher than this, so you clip.

in answer to the OP.. make a mix down that clips and i will personally hunt you down and break your legs.

and then steal your gear.

thanks,

 

[ESPJL5150]

in answer to the OP.. make a mix down that clips and i will personally hunt you down and break your legs.

and then steal your gear.

thanks,

That's ROTFL!

 

[HandsOfDespair]

Listen to Hypocrisy's 'Virus' for your answer

The band I'm mixing right now said they love Virus production because they're listening ot it they feel like their speakers are on the point of breaking.

...

 

[Harry Hughes]

The band I'm mixing right now said they love Virus production because they're listening ot it they feel like their speakers are on the point of breaking.

...

uke: