I’ve been recording LP’s aiming for -12 to -6 decibels but after using the amplify effect audacity shows clipping but I don’t hear an audible difference between the digital file and the LP itself. I’m tempted to say that is just the way it is and leave it at that. It seems like the clipping is occuring at -0.1
The three LP’s this is happening with is Scorpions, Dio and Skid Row. It’s boggling my mind because they sound fine. Any ideas on what I should be doing here?
What do you mean by “low end”?
The Amplify effect with the default setting shouldn’t REALLY cause chipping but it might “show red” when one or more samples hits 0dB.
You can Amplify to -0.1dB and it shouldn’t show clipping and you won’t hear any loss of volume. Or, you can Amplify to -1dB and you still won’t notice a loss of volume.
It seems like the clipping is occuring at -0.1
Why do you think that? If you have 0.1dB of headroom and you run Amplify again it should default to +0.1dB of amplification. If it defaults to 0dB (no change) your current peak is 0dB.
It’s boggling my mind because they sound fine.
Like I said, it’s probably not clipping but you are unlikely to hear very-slight clipping anyway. In any case it’s “good practice” to avoid (actual) clipping.
Audacity shows red for POTENTIAL clipping. Audacity can go over 0dB internally/temporarily and it’s not necessarily clipped yet. It will be clipped if you export as a regular WAV file. ADCs (recording), DACs (playback), regular WAV files and CDs are all hard-limited to 0dB and they will clip if you “try” to go over.
On the other hand if you have a clipped waveform, Audacity won’t show red if it’s clipped below 0dB. i.e. You can “hide” clipping by lowering the volume. …Audacity is not analyzing the wave shape.
BTW - The Normalize effect is similar to Amplify but it defaults to -1dB peaks. If you use the default it should never “show red”.
NOTE - If you are making MP3s (or using other lossy formats) the lossy compression changes the wave shape making some peaks higher and some lower. So if the original peaks at 0dB the compressed version will often go over 0dB and if you open it in Audacity it will “show red”. MP3 can actually go over 0dB without clipping so Audacity is just giving you a warning, but you can clip your DAC if you play it at "full digital volume. Personally, I don’t worry about the slight clipping and MP3 is lossy (imperfect) anyway. But some people normalize to -1dB before converting to MP3 to avoid that.
Thanks for your reply. I remember reading on the forum that audacity shows potential clipping. That must be what’s going on. I’m going by the red lines that show after I use the amplify effect.
By low end I meant -0.1
The waveform touches 0.1 and -0.1 once in awhile where red lines appear.
Thank you for the clarification. I’m not going to carry on doing what I’m doing.
I’m backing up my LP collection to lossless formats