Clipping Issues

sunny d · Post by **sunny d** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:32 pm

I'm new to the whole dub thing, so bear with me. I'm using reason 4.1 to produce right now, and I am having trouble with mixing. Specifically, as soon as I get something where it should be in the mix, it leads to crazy clipping issues. As a result, i have to mix something in the track lower and it makes the final product sound bad. So I guess my question is how do I properly mix a track whilest avoiding clipping iswsues in reason. Or should I switch workstations for mixing? Any insight is much appreciated.

serox · Post by **serox** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:02 pm

Dont understand what you mean tbh.

Just keep the levels out of the red. It doesnt matter what if the tune is quiet in Reason you can make it louder later.

aspire · Post by **aspire** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:20 pm

Serox wrote:Dont understand what you mean tbh.

Just keep the levels out of the red. It doesnt matter what if the tune is quiet in Reason you can make it louder later.

Yep. Don't be afraid to turn the levels down. You can also look into EQing, you may have some undesired frequencies in there that are conflicting with other elements of your track.

futures_untold · Post by **futures_untold** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:29 pm

Within Reason, turn the master volume down on your mixer.

You could also wack a Maximizer across the output of the mixer, but that's lazy and doesn't address the issue of good mixing.

I mix my tunes with a minimum of 10Db headroom. When I've finished, I use an audio editor to normailse the track. Unlike compression or limiting, normalisation doesn't alter the transients within the song.

slim · Post by **slim** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:36 pm

futures_untold wrote:turn the master volume down on your mixer.

normailse the track.

From what i have heard both of these aren't great things to do. First one i don't think is really that bad, but if you are having to turn your master volume down to stop it clipping you probably need to eq things a bit more or turn them down.

Normalising, from what i understand raises the noise floor of the track and will make it sound digital and shitty. I think there was a thread earilier where jason from transition went on a very well detailed rant about this.

drwurst · Post by **drwurst** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:54 pm

Slim wrote:
futures_untold wrote:turn the master volume down on your mixer.

normailse the track.
From what i have heard both of these aren't great things to do. First one i don't think is really that bad, but if you are having to turn your master volume down to stop it clipping you probably need to eq things a bit more or turn them down.

Normalising, from what i understand raises the noise floor of the track and will make it sound digital and shitty. I think there was a thread earilier where jason from transition went on a very well detailed rant about this.

yep, just wanted to say the same thing....there are many reason not to normalize your final mix,...before mastering stage...., and turning your master down sounds even more wrong to me, master straight to zero...individual tracks down until they sum up to -6db (or desired headroom) on the master, that would be the right way round; i am not on reason, but i think it must be the same as any mixer...? and if this aint loud enough you turn up the amplifier and nothing else to give you the desired mixing volume.

futures_untold · Post by **futures_untold** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:17 pm

-10dB, that's what I meant lol!

I always give myself room to whilst I'm creating the track, just so I know that I won't have to compress stupidly just to avoid digital clipping.

I tend to eq as well as mixing around -10dB. I also compress things I feel need compression, but I always try to avoid compressing or limiting my entire mix.

I'd be interested to read the thread you mentioned by Jason regarding normailisation processes. My view of normailisation is that it turns up or down everything equally. As I only work with softsynths, I don't have any noise floor issues.

sunny d · Post by **sunny d** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 5:35 pm

Thanks for all the replies folks. It would appear that I had my master volume on my mixer set too high. I wasn't thinking about raising the levels in another program after sending the song out of Reason, so I was trying to get everything loud enough within Reason. I gave myself some headroom and then tweaked the volume in Audacity, and now its sounding great. Thanks for the help!

slothrop · Post by **slothrop** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 7:12 pm

I tend to keep the master at 0dB - a lot of people are quite religious about this, but I think that's a relic of analogue desks and live instrumentation where noise and headroom are issues and proper gain structuring is seriously important.

In practice, I find that the advantage is that you know exactly how much sound in a given channel translates to sound in the mix, ie (this is the bit of knowledge I find seriously useful) a track that peaks at -6dB is taking up exactly half of your headroom. So if you have drums and bass each peaking a little below -6, you want to make everything else pretty damn quiet to fit in, and if your drums are peaking at -4, either turn them down a bit or make sure the bass is peaking well below -6. (Generally in a dubstep tune (or any other bass heavy dance music) the drums and bass are the loudest elements and most other things can get away with being a whole lot quieter.)

Taking that approach, I tend to end up with everything working ok and nothing clipping. If you move the master fader around then this doesn't work. It's a matter of taste, though.

Re normalizing, here's a KvR thread on the subject that gives a decent bit of the theory:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

Clipping Issues

Clipping Issues

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