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.SynthGang wrote: ↑22 Jan 2024Hey 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!
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.]