Audacity now clips EVERYTHING at 0.50db! WHY?

[Greenland]

I have two workstations. One runs Audacity 3.3.2,…the other new PC is running 3.4.2. They both employ the same mics ( RE20’s and RE27’s) and are recording with the same parameters set. The newer version now clips EVERYTHING exactly at .5db. WHY is it doing that??? Why did it add some sort of stupidly low threshold? No matter what I try to adjust it will not stop this terrible issue! Changing the recording levels, settings etc has zero effect…going from mono to stereo is NOT a good answer and it did not work anyway. The main thing here is that the older version works on my my older PC.

This is beyond maddening.

[DVDdoug]

0.5dB or 50% (-6dB)?

There is an explanation for -6dB when recording in mono with one mic and a stereo interface. With two mics together, the combined mono can hit 100%.

-0.5dB is about 95% and it’s generally impossible to get +0.5dB (or anything over 0dB).

[Greenland]

[Greenland]

This is how Audacity SHOULD behave when recording audio and this is how it DOES work on my older PC and older version 3.3.2. Can someone please explain why it now cuts EVERYTHING at above 0.5 in the newer updates and on my new PC? Why dies it suddenly seem to have applied a cutoff or threshold? This makes ZERO sense!