Clipping, Distortion, Crackle on MacBook Pro & iPhone

[wado1942]

Welcome to the world consumer electronics. Those devices have $0.15 amplifiers driving $0.20 speakers. They're not designed to be pushed hard and all that stuff you're playing is maximum loud all the time. There's just no room for the repro system to breathe. If you don't want your music to distort on bad systems when cranked all the way, don't "master" so hot.

I noticed all the plugins you listed are primarily compression/limiting progs. Getting stuff loud should be way down the list from making it sound good. What are you doing to control frequencies that may have too much power? How much headroom are you leaving?

[ryanwilsonfive]

Anyone else want to chime in?

Originally Posted by wado1942

What are you doing to control frequencies that may have too much power? How much headroom are you leaving?

I use equalization.

The headroom varies somewhat from track to track. When I bounce, before creating a new session for the mastering, I usually keep it in the middle of the yellow on the meter in Pro Tools. Never clipping, if that's what you're wondering.

[Lagerfeldt]

Originally Posted by ryanwilsonfive

I can hear audible distortion on my MacBook Pro speakers when I turn the volume all the way up. The same goes for when I use my iPhone, plugged into the Aux input of my car, with it's volume up to the max.

You're driving a crap system beyond it's capacity.

One volume click down, and the problem goes away. Most of the time, it is more noticeable on a track that has the telephone/AM effect, or something with very sparse instrumentation - an acoustic/piano and vocal, or just a solo instrument/voice. I have heard this on commercially released material as well, like: Adele - "Someone Like You" / Sugarland - "Stay" / Miranda Lambert - "The House That Built Me." Again, these are mainly just vocal and instrument. So, what causes this?

That sounds more like the built-in output protection limiter kicking in. This causes intermodulation distortion as well as pumping. It's also very sensitive to inter-sample peaks. Same goes for the built-in speaker system in iMacs. It's easy to test for by creating a signal with lots of inter-sample peaks and listening to the result on a MacBook or iMac.

I'm not so worried about inter-sample peaks when it comes to playback of a CD, but the main reason why I'm always using a 4x oversampled limiter is because so much music is played back on Spotify (which also has a built-in limiter that reacts to ISPs), converted on iTunes and played back on inferior small systems like laptops and iPhones.

I very seldom hear this on commercial releases, like those I'm trying to compete with (Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, etc.). Some that I can hear it on are: Lady Antebellum - "I Run To You" / My Chemical Romance - "I'm Not Okay" - just naming those off the top of my head. So, again, what's going on here?

WAVS or from iTunes? AACs from iTunes are converted in 32 bit float and normalizes 0 dBFS+ signals downwards, which removes (most) inter-sample peaks. Use an inter-sample peak meter with 4x oversampling to check for this.

Depending on how problematic the issue is AND on whether there's masking in the song it will be audible or not.

My guess is that you're experience two different problems, though they may happen at the same time when you're pushing the envelope.

Finally, a good production and good mix will translate better on any system.

[wado1942]

Originally Posted by ryanwilsonfive

I use equalization.

The headroom varies somewhat from track to track. When I bounce, before creating a new session for the mastering, I usually keep it in the middle of the yellow on the meter in Pro Tools. Never clipping, if that's what you're wondering.

Well, I meant headroom after mastering, especially if MP3/AAC type encoding is involved.

My question of EQ is not what tool you're using so much as what techniques are you using. A spike in frequency response somewhere might not be that audible, but eat up a lot of headroom. Low frequencies are especially hard on small speakers, so it's important to keep them under control. However, the response of laptop speakers are so inconsistent, the problem could be at just about any frequency. Really, though, you just can't expect to have a super hot master sound remotely decent on laptop speakers, regardless of how good the production/engineering is.

[siddhu]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt

Use an inter-sample peak meter with 4x oversampling to check for this.

Hi Lagerfeldt - what inter-sample peak meter with 4x oversampling are you using?