Almost all my songs are audibly clipping, what am I missing?

[selig]

Thus, that is the only place clipping can occur.

Hey Selig,

What you explained has always been my understanding not to mention that, according to the manual, there's 64-bit summing in the mix bus in the Main Mixer Master Section.

It's also my understanding that this gives you (virtually?) limitless headroom, but I was able to easily (and audibly) clip the master - I'm now wondering where in my mind is the breakdown?

What I did was simple:

• Loaded a single instance of Subtractor, reset the device, set the waveform to sine, turned level up to max, amp envelope ADR set to 0 and Sustain set to 127

• Inserted an instance of Selig Gain, set fader to max (+24dB for those that don't have it)

Basically as soon as I bring up the Master Fader high enough to where my Audio Out Clip indicators come on, I'm hearing audible distortion. Using Voicemeeter Potato, I used the Virtual Aux channel of Voicemeeter, which I then routed into Audacity and recorded at 32-bit - waveforms are very heavily clipped.

I was just hoping you could shed some light on what I'm misunderstanding here if possible? My thinking is that I'm not "exporting" and recording the signal being played back by Reason in 32 bits. Is it just that I'm feeding it more than enough signal or am I missing something?

Here's what the audio sounds like (exported in 32-bit WAV and clip gain attenuated by -10dB):

Would really appreciate your insights!

Remember that the “unlimited headroom” we speak of is ONLY when you are inside of Reason, and that in no way means you will never HEAR clipping. You can very easily clip the outputs in Reason, some sounds load up clipping from the start. BUT, the solution is to turn them down BEFORE the output.

You can have the master slamming at +100dBFS as long as you follow it by a reduction of at least 100dB you will not clip the output.

I’m not sure the question though, but I’ll try to answer the basics in case it answers your question.

You clip the outputs and you hear clipping, right? What is the question then? If the question is “where is it clipping”, it’s “the outputs”.
Even more simply put: You clip when you exceed available headroom.
Inside of Reason you have wide headroom so you can’t exceed it (easily).
Outside of Reason you clip when you exceed 0dBFS.

They key here is that all audio we hear has to be OUTSIDE of Reason to be heard. We don’t listen to the raw digital data, we listen to an analog signal derived from the digital data. To do that we need to convert the digital signal to an analog signal, and that is where the bottle neck exists.

Compare this to audio coming INTO Reason and being clipped on the way in. In that case you cannot get rid of the clipping by lowering the fader in Reason! This is because the “order of processing” where the clipping occurs before the signal is converted to digital, in the analog domain. Similarly, once you export a clipping file it is written as a clipped file.

Basically, what we hear is 24 bit audio. 24 bit audio clips at 0dBFS. The fact you hear clipping is because you are listening through a fixed point system (we all do). The beauty of this is that if you hear clipping you will export clipping. But it’s also possible that if you do not hear clipping despite some clipping on playback, you likewise will not hear it on the export (though some cheaper music players were said to handle clipped audio worse, so may be audible on some systems).

Or maybe I have misread your question, and apologies if so - this is obviously not a super simple concept to understand or to express.

[in re-reading you mention exporting from Reason in 32 bits, but Reason does not support 32 bit export (yet). If it was exporting at 32 bits it would preserve levels over 0dBFS.]

[avasopht]

... I put my limiter between the master and the audio interface, AND I still hear it if I clip the outputs. I do this to replicate how I’ve used mastering over the years, which is AFTER the mix stage. Patching it this way makes sense to me, but that’s probably just because it’s how I’m used to working.

The default Reason template has its mastering combinator between the Master Out and the Hardware Interface as well.

This was probably a lot more obvious to new Reason users when you only had the 14:2 Line mixer and the connection to the Hardware Interface was much more in your face.

[QVprod]

... I put my limiter between the master and the audio interface, AND I still hear it if I clip the outputs. I do this to replicate how I’ve used mastering over the years, which is AFTER the mix stage. Patching it this way makes sense to me, but that’s probably just because it’s how I’m used to working.

The default Reason template has its mastering combinator between the Master Out and the Hardware Interface as well.

This was probably a lot more obvious to new Reason users when you only had the 14:2 Line mixer and the connection to the Hardware Interface was much more in your face.

This is a fair point that even I missed with the added SSL and master inserts. You had no choice but to do it correctly with earlier versions

[mcatalao]

In that case we agree, although I see this argument as academic, because there's no point to have signal on master other than to hear it or export it to file. The peak & VU meters measure the output, not the signal "inside" of master.

Actually, if you think about some audio cards, the difference between what the software sends to the card's internal mixer (wich already has a fader too) on a streamming context where you might have other softwares in another channel putting out audio, might allow you to pull your master fader up if you lower that mixer's down, and have higher than 0 into the audio card mixer (actually into the asio driver, into the mixer).

So there's a practical usage, as long as the audio card internal mixer has also more than 24 bit resolutioin, for example Total Mix is 48 bit (non floating point) so you can pull up that fader and you won't clip the attributed channel.
RME totalmix also allows you to route audio from an audio application to another, route between drivers (example, routing a youtube song to reason or reason to windows recorder), it can record all the outputs and throughputs spitting them to audio, and so on, all this on 48 bit resolution. Again if at unity you had something at +4 db above full scale in reason, you pull it to a Total mix channel that is at - 5 to account for other softwares, at the output you don't go below full scale.

In current day's audio cards, the last process is the DAC, but most times there's an internal mixer also with more resolution than 24 bit, for a lot of purposes, routing, monitoring, etc, etc.

PS.: I was thinking after writting, and being the devil's advocate, i have to test this theory, because reason suposely "sees" the audio card as a 24bit system, and should only output 24 bit, so the truncation "might" still be done inside of reason. That being said, I've seen red on total mix, but i have some testing to do.

[Unaudited]

-10dB WHAT on the channels? VU? Peak? PPM? Are you using VU offset? You can easily clip the output with VU levels that high (see below for an example)

If you use the channel meters you are seeing average level, not peak level. A signal at -10dBVU could easily be clipping the outputs since the peak level can be 10dB, 20dB, or more above the average. By the time you combine 3-4 all at -10dBVU you may already be clipping the outputs. Check out the default snare on Kong Kit (the default kit) - if you set it to -10dB on the channel you're already clipping the output by +2dBFS.

That said, if you use a consistent peak level for all signals, like would happen back in the day of digital tape machines, you will leave headroom for the mix bus to allow many channels to be combined.
I really wish they had the option to have the channel meters follow the main meters, I really like the VU + Peak mode and use it all the time on the Big Meter to judge crest factor (peak level minus average level, a good indicator of loudness IMO).

How does one learn what the different reason metering types are and how to read them and their practical usage? Personally I've never looked at the numbers and never switched to a different type than the default. What is the purpose of different meters in the first place, is there one you can use for everything?

[selig]

-10dB WHAT on the channels? VU? Peak? PPM? Are you using VU offset? You can easily clip the output with VU levels that high (see below for an example)

If you use the channel meters you are seeing average level, not peak level. A signal at -10dBVU could easily be clipping the outputs since the peak level can be 10dB, 20dB, or more above the average. By the time you combine 3-4 all at -10dBVU you may already be clipping the outputs. Check out the default snare on Kong Kit (the default kit) - if you set it to -10dB on the channel you're already clipping the output by +2dBFS.

That said, if you use a consistent peak level for all signals, like would happen back in the day of digital tape machines, you will leave headroom for the mix bus to allow many channels to be combined.
I really wish they had the option to have the channel meters follow the main meters, I really like the VU + Peak mode and use it all the time on the Big Meter to judge crest factor (peak level minus average level, a good indicator of loudness IMO).

How does one learn what the different reason metering types are and how to read them and their practical usage? Personally I've never looked at the numbers and never switched to a different type than the default. What is the purpose of different meters in the first place, is there one you can use for everything?

Every visual aid in audio is typically showing only one or two aspects of a signal, from a VU meter to an oscilloscope. So there really isn't any one meter type that shows you everything. That said, I use VU + Peak mode in Reason because it combines the two most useful qualities IMO, Peak (instantaneous) and Average (300ms integration time for VU). They each show a different quality of the signal. VU shows roughly how loud we humans perceive the sound to be (but doesn't account for equal loudness curves). Peak shows the highest value reached no matter how short in duration. Peak is thus important if you want to accurately control the amount of headroom of any signal since the absolute highest level of any signal is the first data point needed to determine headroom.

But IMO there is a special magic that happens when you view peak and average together, such as with VU + Peak mode in Reason (which sadly doesn't apply to the channel meters for some inexplicable reason). This is because the difference between the peak and the average is know to be a useful value, called the "crest factor". Crest factor is a good indicator of loudness, but I like to think of it as "density". A dense sound could have a lower crest factor than a sparse sound.
Compression is the most common tool to adjust crest factor (saturation and clipping also work), typically by reducing dynamic range such that you reduce the difference between the peak and the average level (crest factor).
You can do the opposite with compression by using a slow attack to allow the transient to pass and then clamping down hard (high ratio) on the average level, thus increasing the crest factor (more sparse)

Here is a bit of more in depth reading on the subject of metering:
https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/metering
https://tapeop.com/interviews/54/meters/

[jam-s]

How does one learn what the different reason metering types are and how to read them and their practical usage? Personally I've never looked at the numbers and never switched to a different type than the default. What is the purpose of different meters in the first place, is there one you can use for everything?

As usual the info can be found in the fine manual.

[moofi]

Additionally it´s as well important whether the limiter is capable of detecting intersample peaks because (for those who don´t know) the interpolation between two sample points of the digital waveform, that are below 0dB themselves, can create a signal/curve in between the samples that goes above 0dB.

[...] As for your limiter, not all limiters are the same - some do better preventing overs than others. And even the limiters that DO prevent all overs may do so more aggressively than others, and thus “sound” distorted. Both clipping and limiting are “distorting” (changing) the shape of the waveform, it’s just that limiters are working hard to do so more transparantely than clippers in most cases. [...]

[Brosefski]

Can we get a source on that supposed Albert Einstein quote in the video? I know he played violin and had an interest in the creation of electronically generated sounds from the time he was alive... but that quote is a bit too modern sounding where my skepticism got triggered.

[avasopht]

Can we get a source on that supposed Albert Einstein quote in the video? I know he played violin and had an interest in the creation of electronically generated sounds from the time he was alive... but that quote is a bit too modern sounding where my skepticism got triggered.

What quote?

[selig]

Can we get a source on that supposed Albert Einstein quote in the video? I know he played violin and had an interest in the creation of electronically generated sounds from the time he was alive... but that quote is a bit too modern sounding where my skepticism got triggered.

What quote?

What video?

[Rising Night Wave]

OP's question: Almost all my songs are audibly clipping, what am I missing?

My answer: You probably have all REs too loud - meaning the master knob for RE'ss output is set to too loud + when you are doing EQuing in mix section you potentionaly can rise loudness of mix lane. ... So... lower the REs output loudness.

PS: I haven't read OP's whole 1st post neither the whole thread. So if I missed the point I apologise.

[DaveyG]

Can we get a source on that supposed Albert Einstein quote in the video? I know he played violin and had an interest in the creation of electronically generated sounds from the time he was alive... but that quote is a bit too modern sounding where my skepticism got triggered.

As Socrates once said, "Never trust quotes on the Internet".

[avasopht]

Found it (well, it's Theremin giving an account on Einstein's interest):

Theremin sailed across the Atlantic, getting a studio on West 54th Street in New York City. It was a magnet for composers and scientists alike; Einstein, a keen violinist, used a room at the house Theremin rented for exploring the connection between music and geometry. “I gave him a study, not very big. I found him an assistant, one of my co-workers who was a painter, to help him draw these sketches, and he would come and do his work. I saw him many times, very often,” Theremin told Mattis in the 1989 interview.

From the interview link above:

... There was one man who was interested in the color of music, the connection between light and music, and that was Einstein. He asked– He showed me that his wife played piano very well; he could play violin, and he tried to play the thereminvox. He asked me if he could use my studio; I had a big, big house that I rented in New York, at 37 West 54th Street.

Mattis: What repertory did you play with Einstein?

Theremin: Einstein, no Einstein was more interested in the connection between music and geometrical figures: not only color, but mostly triangles, hexagons, heptagons, different kinds of geometrical figures. He wanted to combine these into drawings. He asked whether he could have a laboratory in a small room in my large house, where he could draw. So I gave him a study, not very big. I found him a [woman] assistant, one of my co-workers who was a painter, to help him draw these sketches, and he would come and do his work. I saw him many times, very often. It was not the field that I was interested in, these geometrical figures. I can’t say that from my point of view they [the figures] had a psychological effect on the colors of the music. He was there for a long time. All the walls were covered with these paintings, with these drawings. There was not enough room, and he wanted more room. So I found another big place. I got a room in my good friend’s house, an American. He had a very large house, and I referred him to that house. He continued to work on these things there with my assistant, the painter.