help all my music is clipped

[teardrop]

i don't know why but all my music is clipped to hell in audacity even my decaf stuff please help

[larrys95civic]

Most music is, especially enhanced music -bass boosted and what not, most dubstep is already pushed to clipping with out enhancing it.

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

i don't know why but all my music is clipped to hell in audacity even my decaf stuff please help

Did this just recently happen, or has it always been like this? And if you go in and check the parts where it's clipped you should be able to tell whether it's the bass that's actually clipped or just the mids/highs. If it still looks like a sine wave where the bass hits instead of just flat areas at the top/bottom of the wave then it should just be the mids/highs clipping.

[teardrop]

i don't know why but all my music is clipped to hell in audacity even my decaf stuff please help

Did this just recently happen, or has it always been like this? And if you go in and check the parts where it's clipped you should be able to tell whether it's the bass that's actually clipped or just the mids/highs. If it still looks like a sine wave where the bass hits instead of just flat areas at the top/bottom of the wave then it should just be the mids/highs clipping.

i dont know i just started checking some and most is clipped how would i check if its the mids and highs

[moh.vze.com]

i don't know why but all my music is clipped to hell in audacity even my decaf stuff please help

Did this just recently happen, or has it always been like this? And if you go in and check the parts where it's clipped you should be able to tell whether it's the bass that's actually clipped or just the mids/highs. If it still looks like a sine wave where the bass hits instead of just flat areas at the top/bottom of the wave then it should just be the mids/highs clipping.

i dont know i just started checking some and most is clipped how would i check if its the mids and highs

I'm kinda curios too! What would it look like in the Windows Media Player Scope? I know how to look for square waves but not too sure on for mids/highs.

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

All I really know is that in Audacity if you zoom in to the track right around where the bass is hitting, you should be able to see the wave. If you check out this picture:

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/396232_3200453882958_1014379508_33088559_832649618_n.jpg

You can see the top track which is Hustle Hard by Ace Hood. Notice how the lines look flat right around the top/bottom when the bass hits? That's what clipping is. If it were to look wavy like the bottom however (just a pure sine wave I generated) then you'd be fine.

[OrionStang]

Are you just looking at the red parts?

[Decaf]

I responded to this yesterday but I couldn't find the thread and thought it was deleted...hmmm

Its usually just mids/highs. Here's a recent song I've done vs a sine wave. From first glance the song looks worse because you can see some red lines

Now after zooming in you can see that I was able to make a SEVERELY clipped sine wave and simply lowered it below 0dB so it wouldn't clip/turn red to prove a point. The show clipping/find clipping feature will only indicate if ANY frequency has passed 0dB. It will not indicate horrendously flat bass lines that will keep the sub at peak voltage and reduce cooling abilities.

That one red line is less than a ten thousandth of a second, even though it reaches 0dB for a split second it will never cause the damage the sine wave below will.

This is why the object of messing with music should not be to eliminate all the red, nor should you be HPF'n/LPF'n the track the get rid of red... that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. You are missing a huge aspect of the song that dictates how it will perform on your stereo if you never zoom in. The waveform of the bass line is key. First watch the song through windows media player oscope, then if its clean enough send it to audacity or whatever your favorite program is. Then zoom in and examine what the song looks like.

Most rock, dubstep, rap , heavy metal, RnB all straight from the cd will reach 0dB and turn red in audacity, you have to figure out how far past 0dB it is, and if it cause damaging clipping that is audible and detrimental. Also, remember that no speaker is getting the full bandwidth of the song... so while a recording may be at 0dB here and there, the signal is separated to each speaker via crossovers which reduces the power and signal.

For example, lets say 0 is silence and 30 is the loudest. A song could have 25 units of bass, 3units of mids and 1 unit of treble. Collectively they add up to 29 and in a few spots the song turned audacity red. But once you separate the bass and send it to the sub amp its only seeing 25units, not 29... make sense?

[Baydestrian]

Also, don't fret too much about clipping in songs, unless it is audibly distorted (Gucci Mane - Swing My Door is a great example of wayyyyy too much bass lol). Make sure your amps are set properly and know when your headunit clips, be smart with the volume on songs you know clip even if not audibly, for instance Big KRIT music which has clipped thuds (like most TX music). I play clipped music all the time in my car, subs still work, go figure lol.