Impact of Volume envelope on clipping

AFSDMS wrote on 2/2/2001, 3:36 PM

For the final tweak before burning a CD with CD Architect,
I have used the volume envelope. This particular CD is made
up of individual .WAV files and getting the 'ensemble'
levels right has been a challenge. In doing so I had this
question for which I could not find the answer.

If the pushing up of a volume envelope for a track should
happen to push a transient into clipping, how is that
handled by CD Architect? Does it just clip or is some sort
of limiting or dynamic compression enabled. From my tests
it seems this is happening, but I can find no reference for
such a thing.

Thanks much.

Wayne Munn

Comments

JeffR wrote on 2/7/2001, 8:25 AM

It gets clipped. So long as the clipping period is very
short (1 ms or so) you won't hear it.

Jeff Rippe
Rocksonics Professional Audio

AFSDMS wrote on 2/7/2001, 10:55 AM

Thanks Jeff. And I will confirm you note. While I was
waiting for a reply I decided to do a test. Sure does clip
alright!

Just means I need to make sure the content I point CD
Architect at is 'ready-to-fly' since I haven't seen any
indication of clipping warnings within CD Architect.

BTW, my test was to boost a track, burn to CD, then extract
that track back to a .WAV and open in SF.

Wayne Munn

BrentA wrote on 2/7/2001, 11:55 AM

When I'm burning compilation CDs with CD Architect, I will
sometimes lower volume of a waveform that was mastered
particularly loud but I seldom will raise a waveform in CDA
for the exact reason you mentioned...not enough indicators
of how much headroom I have and when it will clip.

If I need to raise the volume of some tracks, I go back to
the original waveform in Sound Forge. If I think
Normalizing will raise it enough, I will do that. If I
don't think that will be enough, I run it through
(Steinberg) Loudness Maximizer which is sort of an
intelligent limiter. It raises the overall volume but
adjusts the waveform to keep the peaks at 0db. Doesn't seem
to effect the overall dynamic feel of the track too much
other than making it louder.

The forthcoming Sound Forge 5.0 has something called
WaveHammer which, by the description, sounds a lot like
Loudness Maximizer. That alone may be reason to upgrade if
you don't already have LM or something similar (I got it as
part of Steinberg's Mastering Edition which also contains
the useful life-infusing plug-in Spectralizer).

Regards, Brent

mcm wrote on 2/11/2001, 9:15 PM

BTW: Did you know that you can reduce the screen size of
CDA ("restore" button in the top right corner of CDA and
when it does you can see the meeters of Sound Forge behind
it (off to the right side). Playing CDA then gives you the
Sound Forge meters. mcm

MJim wrote on 2/11/2001, 10:28 PM

Before opening cda, right click on the SF meters &
choose "always on top". The meters will then show up in
cda with full size screen.

:BTW: Did you know that you can reduce the screen size of
CDA ("restore" button in the top right corner of CDA and
when it does you can see the meeters of Sound Forge behind
it (off to the right side). Playing CDA then gives you the
Sound Forge meters. mcm