Simple question about addition

A

Alexi

Drench Audio
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This is probably a really basic question, but I've been wondering about it as I'm working on improving my mixdowns

If you have, for example, three different snares on sepeate audio tracks sent to one bus, although each seperate track does not clip, the bus does, because of the three tracks being mixed together

If you just turn the bus volume down, so it doesn't clip on the meter, will this just being turning down the clipped signal, or will the signal just use the extra headroom.

I'm using ableton, not that this makes any difference to the theory.

Cheers
 
Alexi said:
This is probably a really basic question, but I've been wondering about it as I'm working on improving my mixdowns

If you have, for example, three different snares on sepeate audio tracks sent to one bus, although each seperate track does not clip, the bus does, because of the three tracks being mixed together

If you just turn the bus volume down, so it doesn't clip on the meter, will this just being turning down the clipped signal, or will the signal just use the extra headroom.

I'm using ableton, not that this makes any difference to the theory.

Cheers
Click to expand...

If all the meters are saying it's not clipping, it's not clipping, just turn your bus down a little bit :)
 
Are you accidentally running a parrallel bus? Where the outputs from the individual snares are running to both the bus channel, and the master channel? This would cause a louder output volume, thus cause clipping. When parallel bussing I usually have the volume at a considerably lower db.

If thats not the case, and each individual channel is not clipping.......then I'm out of ideas, unless you're over compressing stuff?
 
I think clipping doesn't occur until the signal is rendered to audio, so if the bus is ok then it should be fine?

One thing Gordo mentioned once was to watch for internal clipping within some plugs, for example in your case if you had an eq plug before the volume control the hot signal running through the eq could result in some distortion. I don't know how true or common this is but it's something to bear in mind.
 
No the guy is saying, he has 3 snares, which are not clipping on itself.
But if you have 3 snares all peaking at about -6 db and you group those together and they hit at the same time the group bus is going to be clipping.

That's what he means I think.
 
ARTFX said:
No the guy is saying, he has 3 snares, which are not clipping on itself.
But if you have 3 snares all peaking at about -6 db and you group those together and they hit at the same time the group bus is going to be clipping.

That's what he means I think.
Click to expand...

its not happening in newer daws tho as they all got this 32 bit system thing or whatever its called installed that avoids that kinda stuff ^^^

your fine alexi, dont worry.
 
Cheers for the replies

The individual tracks are routed to the bus only, so don't have to worry about parallel bussing.

I think it's probably a really minor point, as there's no audible clipping, just thought it was worth asking.

It's similar to djing that when two or more tracks are playing with the upfader fully up, it's louder than just one playing.

I guess I could just turn down all the component parts routed to the bus and keep the bus level at 0db.
 
groelle said:
as i said, in newer daws you dont have to as internal clipping is avoided by the 32bit system thing.
Click to expand...

yeah, sorry my phone rang while I was replying so your answer must have slipped inbetween

cheers for the answer, one less thing to worry about when mixing down, only a million others left
 
groelle said:
its not happening in newer daws tho as they all got this 32 bit system thing or whatever its called installed that avoids that kinda stuff ^^^

your fine alexi, dont worry.
Click to expand...

Do all individual plugs operate at 32 bit floating point tho? That would be the last consideration.
 
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