[Lupo]

Hi!

Thanks for the nice comments!

Originally Posted by Bob Yordan

So what happens if I clipp the signal at a lower level and in a 'controlled way', before the final stage? Will the peak information create any/less troubles for non expensive equipments then to?

If you clip in the analogue domain, before the ADC, all is fine. The AD will bandwidth limit the signal appropriately and an ADC, that is not driven into clipping, is guaranteed to make a stream of legal sample values/no hidden overs. As long as the signal is not tampered in the digital domain, for example normalizing. If you clip/hardlimit digitaly and lower the master level appropriately after clipping, there will be no 'hidden' overs either. But you'll gain no loudness.. and an A/B comparison between clip/non-clipped will quickly show you what sounds best. Even if the clipping by chance has it's charm for that particular piece of music, it's an unpredictable way of adding distortion. Most clippers and limiters are not bandwidth-limited, creating aliasing all over the signal. A test of a few typical limters, showing the aliasing of hard limiting and the benefits of oversampling the limiter, can be found here.

Originally Posted by flatfinger

Regardless of how the results sound in the production environment, it's a crap shoot once the general public starts putting the end product into there cd players! Is'nt that some of the explanation behind whats happening??? The D/A and low pass filters at an M.E. 's place are going to re-construct more elagantly then those cheapy cd players that joe blow uses.

Bingo!

Originally Posted by lucey

I don't have a good technical answer, but speaking from my experiences listening to clipped masters in the car .... they actually sound better there than in here. The other distortions seem to mask the artifacts.

Sometimes the other distortion masks the clipping, sometimes it adds up. Very hard to predict..

Originally Posted by dcollins

How did you restore the peaks in that graphic?

By upsampling from 44.1 to 192 kHz. The bandwidth was extended 4.35 times, so it's not entirely accurate as a way of representing the final output. Using a very steep filter at 20kHz would also account for the overshot of the DA output filter. In digital oscilloscopes, it's common to sample at at least ten times the signal frequency to give an accurate visual viev of the input wave. Oversampling to 440kHz is not an option in my system, nor 384kHz. Those who do have a 384kHz capable wave editor could use this to get a view of the final output wave.




Andreas Nordenstam