Failed QA and baffled why...

Hi everyone,

I’m new here, and I’ve put this question to Audible, but they won’t get back to me for a day or more.

I recorded, edited, mastered and checked my first title on ACX using Audacity.

After 14 business days (about 3 weeks in real time), they told me it wasn’t acceptable because:

  1. “All the files are clipping”
  2. 12 of the files–which ones, they wouldn’t tell me–were “over-compressed.”

As for #2, I can redo the mastering, though I"m at a loss of where they draw the line of what is “over” compression.

But as for #1, ALL my files had peaks of -3.1db or less. The last bit I did in mastering was the limiter to that amount. So…how can even one, let alone ALL files, be clipping?

And yeah, I’m a total noob, but I’ve not been lax in studying up as much as I can. I realize I might be totally missing a major component here, and if so, please point it out. Thank you for any insight you can give!!!

“Clipping” can occur at many stages in the process, either in the analog parts or in the digital ones.

Your peaks may be at -3.1 dB, but if the peaks of the waveform have been lopped off at some point the resulting harsh harmonic distortion will still be evident.

Post a short clip from the loudest section of one of your submissions and let us have a look.

It sounds like you have the unmodified original recording as well, so if you can post the corresponding bit from that we can perhaps help and determine if the issue is in your recording setup or something that happened in post-production (such as over use of the limiter, or using the wrong limiter).