Mix Problems – Clipping Occurs Before “Getting Into the Red”
This past weekend I was working on a mix of tracks that I did not record. The bass guitar and kick drum tracks had numerous instances of obvious, audible clipping. I checked the waveform, and it showed peaks of about -3dB.
Last night I stopped by his place and had him hook up the same bass through the same signal chain and then played fingerstyle and showed him how loud, low notes were still causing the clipping, even with no pick, and even with nothing "in the red".
He was flabbergasted to find that the noises disappeared and that the bass sounded vastly better when recorded with peaks at around -12 on the peak meter. He was also somewhat amazed to hear how much different – I think better – the active bass sounded when plugged right into a line input instead of the fancy preamp. The salient point is that he did not even believe that there could be clipped audio unless the little red light turned on. And piles of documentation and owner's manuals and recording guides that instruct users to "record as close to zero as possible without clipping" have not served him well. There is a lot of circuitry before the sound gets to the digital peak meters, and that early circuitry is arguably the most important stuff in the signal chain.
— yep on forum.cockos.com