[LAU] jack clipping level in dB

Arnold Krille arnold at arnoldarts.de
Tue Apr 26 21:19:48 UTC 2011


On Tuesday 26 April 2011 23:03:25 Harry Van Haaren wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> If Ardour is in the +0.x the little button goes red right? That's the track
> clipping AFAIK...
> A JACK client (and hence SuperCollider) should keep its audio in -1,1

Bot is not necessarily true. Audio levels inside jack can well be beyond 
[-1:1] without any clipping. Inside jack its all float-numbers, they don't clip 
anywhere in the range of typical audio usage.

Only the conversion to integers for the sound-device is the place where 
clipping happens. And at that place the convention is to map the range [-1:1] 
to whatever integers the bit-depth of the device has.
Ardour's red markers "only" inform you that the signal will most likely clip 
when you send it to the hardware like that. Once there is a gain-reduction 
from an amplifier/volume-control or a limiter in the signal-chain, the results 
can be different. (It can also clip when ardour doesn't show a red symbol and 
levels below 0dB.)

Have fun,

Arnold
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