I am responding to this post here because ever-lovin’ Nabble is such a bloody hassle to use:
Leland (AudacityTeam) wrote:
How do y’all feel about indicators showing where clipping occurs?
To do it really right, a clipping indicator should have a user-adjustable “clip” (headroom) level, e.g. -9 dBFS. This enables the user to set a specific amount of headroom before 0 dBFS clipping. The indicator would then show the user if he has exceeded his established headroom level. The headroom level would be set as a Preference. If the user doesn’t want to specify headroom, he need only set the headroom for -0 dBFS.
Clipping indicators would be really useful. There need to be facilities for checking that your final mix has got the right levels (and in particular, doesn’t clip).
The problem with clipping is that once you’ve clipped, it’s too late. The data is gone and is unrecoverable. It’s why we have headroom. See here for an excellent paper on the subject:
