Solos and clipping. Why?

[John_C]

Why is it that many mastering engineers are incapable of listening though an entire song properly?
Everything sound fine and then there's a solo and everything turns into a nasty fizzing clipping mess on so many albums!

 

[Andy Sneap]

well its a toss up of having an album 2 db quieter or a bit of fizz on the solo, unfortunately people arent prepared to go for the quieter option.

 

[John_C]

I guess so. Sad times....

just a thought: there's probably an extra problem, even if the overall clipping was kept constant by ducking the entire mix or the backing, clipping is going to be more obvious with a solo due to the relatively strong and high fundamental frequencies being clipped, creating a stronger ordered sequence of nasty harmonics in the high mids and highs than a lower fundamental would?

 

[John_C]

for anyone who's interested, i'm not sure why i did this with a bunch of sine waves instead of actually plugging my guitar in, but hey it shows the principle

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/910836/clipping.wav approx. 1MB

2000-3000hz freq. mix clean > 2000-3000hz freq. mix w/ 85% clipping > 200-300hz freq. mix clean > 200-300hz frequency mix w/ 85% clipping.

Notice how much more offensive exactly the same amount of clipping is at higher frequencies and how much more it would stand out in a mix