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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: carlbeck on May 19, 2015, 12:38:28 PM
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Last night at New Mastersounds I decided to comp preamps. I ran my MBHO 440's onstage into a splitter, one set of XLR's into my Aerco which provided phantom power, fixed at 20db of gain & the other into my FP24 with phantom off at it's usual gain setting which is around 10:00 using my inline attenuators at the FP24 as I always do. I also ran this same set up with the same settings for the opener, the left channel isn't clipped at all but for NM it looks clipped at the mic or preamp stage. My levels were around -12db on the deck, I bumped these about 6 db in post so it wasn't the DR680 clipping but looks to be mics or preamps? So any thoughts?
FWIW the recordings sound fine, I split the tracks, used mute & solo to alternate between channels with no noticeable distortion, it just looks funny.
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sorry Carl, I have no idea. just saying hi! ;D
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sorry Carl, I have no idea. just saying hi! ;D
Hey Frank, hope you're well!
I zoomed in on the waveform & actually it doesn't look clipped. The drummer was on the left so I was thinking it was clipped but after listening critically & zooming in there doesn't appear to be any actual clipping.
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> there doesn't appear to be any actual clipping.
?? Yes, there certainly is, in the left channel (e.g. around 00:17 to 00:25 and around 01:15 among other places). It's not super-hard clipping, though--there is some slight variation among the peak levels--and the unclipped peaks don't look as if they would have reached more than ~3 dB farther than what you actually see, so it makes sense that you wouldn't hear it. It's also noticeably asymmetrical, i.e. in the positive-going direction of the waveform there is considerably less clipping than there is in the negative-going direction, and that's a mitigating factor as well.
Clipping on simple, steady tones becomes distinctly audible at the 1-to-3% THD level, while moderate amounts of clipping on transient signals (whose overall character is more noise-like than tone-like) is far harder to hear even if it occurs repeatedly. This is why a good limiter doesn't sound "positively bad" if it's used in small doses on appropriate material--it's not so much what you hear as what you don't hear when it works, and what you don't hear, you don't miss.
Again, another reason not to set your recording levels so that the highest peaks are only -12 or even -15 as some people evidently do around here ... it's OK to live a little.
--best regards