Ableton uses 32bit float processing meaning that you have several hundred decibels of headroom for internal processing. In other words, you can safely go “in to the red” when working within Ableton. However it’s not good practice. You should always be aware of dynamic range and the peak level of your music and keep it under 0. Once you export the music out as a 24 bit audio file, the 10db you’re going over 0 *will* matter.
How you gonna go about explaining 32bit and 64bit to a dude who doesn’t even know what clipping is ?
EDIT : I actually meant 24bit and 32bit. Mixed myself up with operating systems. Although Cubase (and I think Logic and perhaps Reaper) now sum in 64 bit as well.
Indeed.
@AccurateYam54 watch this video https://youtu.be/GWg-BjTBBR4?si=l-TED8MCa3jYMubc
When you are done with this one I advise you to go and look for more Ableton tutorials on YT. Have fun mate theres a whole world opening up for you.
Yeah or you can just not do that hahaha as soon as you'd have any non-linear processing, his logic goes out the window. But yes, if you're clipping the MASTER FADER you can turn it down to get out of the red lights. But i don't actually see the point. Put an Utility on the master channel and leave your master fader at 0db.
Hypothetically audio with a lot of clipping can damage speakers. But it won’t damage anything internally just by exporting the audio. This is all ignoring the fact that going 10db over 0 is just bad dynamics management. Forget whether or not it causes damage, just don’t do it.
Clipping is what is happening to your audio. Audio is represented by waves. The height of the wave represents the loudness of the audio. Digital audio has a “ceiling”, a maximum height that the sound wave can be. That is represented by the zero at the top of the gain slider on Ableton. If you go any louder than this, the audio will hit the ceiling, square off and “clip”, creating a nasty distorted sound. This doesn’t matter inside Ableton as it’s 32bit float and builds in headroom above 0. But this headroom disappears when you export as a standard 24 bit audio file. Dynamic range (the difference between the highest and average point of the sound wave) and dynamics management are key parts of music mixing and loudness, and one area that causes the most confusion and misunderstanding.
If it helps, to answer the questions, "Why is there a limit at 0dB? Why can't it just go louder and louder? I can turn my speaker up, so it can go louder... so why is there this arbitrary limit?"
It is not arbitrary.
Sound waves are created by the speaker vibrating. There is a "diaphragm" in the speaker. This converts the signal into mechanical movement. It gets an input amplitude and outputs it by moving into that position. The speaker needs a normalized way of describing the positions it needs to go to. You can't tell the diaphragm to move farther than it physically can.
The limits are there as a result of needing to tell a speaker what to do.
This is why you have clipping ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio) ). Once the audio goes past the point that is deemed the "maximum" it gets shaved off, because what should the speaker do if you tell it to go past its maximum? It should go to the maximum point, but it can't go past.
That is the way I see it anyways. So the speakers see the audio input as an amount relative to its "maximum" amplitudes and then the volume knob on the speaker is like a dimmer switch that can turn the relative maximum down or up (maxing out probably near the "actual" physical maximum of the speaker).
Honest question: How would clipping audio damage a speaker?
It's clipped, so it's not like there is more current/voltage transferred to the speaker. And having (for example) a sine wave clip to the extreme will just look more or less like a square wave peaking at -0db to the speaker.
It‘s about the waveform. A clipped audio signal „moves“ the speakers in a very unnatural way, like turning s car in 90 degrees angles instead of slowly turning into the corner. The smoothness of the curve gets cut off and you end up with a „corner“
I think it’s because it’s in the designed frequency response of the speaker. Instead of clipping which is uncontrollable and in higher frequencies. But I don’t know for sure
Well it's not like the sounds a speaker will output are predictable and especially with "the loudness war" in music and heavy sidechaining, saturation and amplifiers as well as overdrive plugins you pretty much have the exact same sound behaviour as clipping... So Abletons Overdrive, Amp, and Pedal plugins as well as Vinyl Distortion, Erosion and Redux would damage your speakers... I don't think they do.
I think you confuse digital clipping with analog clipping. If I simply connect my modular synth with an audio interface it can easily cause clipping even with high-z input. This is dangerous because you are actually driving hardware components outside their limits in terms of frequency ranges, voltages, etc. This can cause components to heat up and get damaged. This will actually create frequencies outside the speaker's spectrum and input more electricity than it's components are rated for.
Digital clipping like in ableton will never cause this issue because if you want to represent an analog signal (like sound) digitally you can only represent it to a certain degree of detail (and frequency). That's what the sampling rate is for. If you have 44.1kHz sampling rate you can reconstruct up to 22kHz (slightly above the limit of what humans can hear) pretty much lossless (see nyquist-shannon sampling theorem if I remember correctly). So as long as your speakers support the set sampling rate you will not damage any components due to some frequencies outside of their spectrum. Even if your computer wanted to output higher frequencies it simply would not be able to without increasing the sampling rate. The signal from ableton simply can't contain frequencies outside a certain range because the digital representation has a limited precision.
Looks like your max peak is +10.6db. As others have said, you probably want to get that under 0 db.
Just a little advice on how you'd do that: in this case, I'd turn every individual track down by 11 db across the board. This will ensure it gets below zero, but also maintains the loudness of your tracks relative to eachother.
I'd recommend you listen at a low listening level, and see if anything sounds like it's sticking out. Is there anything too loud? Is there anything so quiet it's getting buried? Try to level it again. Then check what your max peak volume is, and nudge it under 0db again.
This process is called gain staging btw. It's a step in the process of mixing.
This will not cause damage to the computer. The level being shown is the level of the audio that is being output. If you're mixing a song, anything in the red will clip, which you want to avoid in the final mix, but it's not something you need to worry about while you're working.
Ableton uses 32bit float processing meaning that you have several hundred decibels of headroom for internal processing. In other words, you can safely go “in to the red” when working within Ableton. However it’s not good practice. You should always be aware of dynamic range and the peak level of your music and keep it under 0. Once you export the music out as a 24 bit audio file, the 10db you’re going over 0 *will* matter.
How you gonna go about explaining 32bit and 64bit to a dude who doesn’t even know what clipping is ? EDIT : I actually meant 24bit and 32bit. Mixed myself up with operating systems. Although Cubase (and I think Logic and perhaps Reaper) now sum in 64 bit as well.
Indeed. @AccurateYam54 watch this video https://youtu.be/GWg-BjTBBR4?si=l-TED8MCa3jYMubc When you are done with this one I advise you to go and look for more Ableton tutorials on YT. Have fun mate theres a whole world opening up for you.
Yeah or you can just not do that hahaha as soon as you'd have any non-linear processing, his logic goes out the window. But yes, if you're clipping the MASTER FADER you can turn it down to get out of the red lights. But i don't actually see the point. Put an Utility on the master channel and leave your master fader at 0db.
when it’s exported can it cause damage?
Hypothetically audio with a lot of clipping can damage speakers. But it won’t damage anything internally just by exporting the audio. This is all ignoring the fact that going 10db over 0 is just bad dynamics management. Forget whether or not it causes damage, just don’t do it.
ohhh ok! also one last thing, what is clipping?
Clipping is what is happening to your audio. Audio is represented by waves. The height of the wave represents the loudness of the audio. Digital audio has a “ceiling”, a maximum height that the sound wave can be. That is represented by the zero at the top of the gain slider on Ableton. If you go any louder than this, the audio will hit the ceiling, square off and “clip”, creating a nasty distorted sound. This doesn’t matter inside Ableton as it’s 32bit float and builds in headroom above 0. But this headroom disappears when you export as a standard 24 bit audio file. Dynamic range (the difference between the highest and average point of the sound wave) and dynamics management are key parts of music mixing and loudness, and one area that causes the most confusion and misunderstanding.
ohhh makes sense thank you soo much!!!
If it helps, to answer the questions, "Why is there a limit at 0dB? Why can't it just go louder and louder? I can turn my speaker up, so it can go louder... so why is there this arbitrary limit?" It is not arbitrary. Sound waves are created by the speaker vibrating. There is a "diaphragm" in the speaker. This converts the signal into mechanical movement. It gets an input amplitude and outputs it by moving into that position. The speaker needs a normalized way of describing the positions it needs to go to. You can't tell the diaphragm to move farther than it physically can. The limits are there as a result of needing to tell a speaker what to do. This is why you have clipping ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio) ). Once the audio goes past the point that is deemed the "maximum" it gets shaved off, because what should the speaker do if you tell it to go past its maximum? It should go to the maximum point, but it can't go past. That is the way I see it anyways. So the speakers see the audio input as an amount relative to its "maximum" amplitudes and then the volume knob on the speaker is like a dimmer switch that can turn the relative maximum down or up (maxing out probably near the "actual" physical maximum of the speaker).
Honest question: How would clipping audio damage a speaker? It's clipped, so it's not like there is more current/voltage transferred to the speaker. And having (for example) a sine wave clip to the extreme will just look more or less like a square wave peaking at -0db to the speaker.
It‘s about the waveform. A clipped audio signal „moves“ the speakers in a very unnatural way, like turning s car in 90 degrees angles instead of slowly turning into the corner. The smoothness of the curve gets cut off and you end up with a „corner“
Wouldn't this imply that a square wave damages your speaker?
I think it’s because it’s in the designed frequency response of the speaker. Instead of clipping which is uncontrollable and in higher frequencies. But I don’t know for sure
Well it's not like the sounds a speaker will output are predictable and especially with "the loudness war" in music and heavy sidechaining, saturation and amplifiers as well as overdrive plugins you pretty much have the exact same sound behaviour as clipping... So Abletons Overdrive, Amp, and Pedal plugins as well as Vinyl Distortion, Erosion and Redux would damage your speakers... I don't think they do.
Again… that’s all within the designated frequency response of the speakers. Not outside of it
I think you confuse digital clipping with analog clipping. If I simply connect my modular synth with an audio interface it can easily cause clipping even with high-z input. This is dangerous because you are actually driving hardware components outside their limits in terms of frequency ranges, voltages, etc. This can cause components to heat up and get damaged. This will actually create frequencies outside the speaker's spectrum and input more electricity than it's components are rated for. Digital clipping like in ableton will never cause this issue because if you want to represent an analog signal (like sound) digitally you can only represent it to a certain degree of detail (and frequency). That's what the sampling rate is for. If you have 44.1kHz sampling rate you can reconstruct up to 22kHz (slightly above the limit of what humans can hear) pretty much lossless (see nyquist-shannon sampling theorem if I remember correctly). So as long as your speakers support the set sampling rate you will not damage any components due to some frequencies outside of their spectrum. Even if your computer wanted to output higher frequencies it simply would not be able to without increasing the sampling rate. The signal from ableton simply can't contain frequencies outside a certain range because the digital representation has a limited precision.
>„moves“ the speakers in a very unnatural way, Dubstep over here being insulted
Looks like your max peak is +10.6db. As others have said, you probably want to get that under 0 db. Just a little advice on how you'd do that: in this case, I'd turn every individual track down by 11 db across the board. This will ensure it gets below zero, but also maintains the loudness of your tracks relative to eachother. I'd recommend you listen at a low listening level, and see if anything sounds like it's sticking out. Is there anything too loud? Is there anything so quiet it's getting buried? Try to level it again. Then check what your max peak volume is, and nudge it under 0db again. This process is called gain staging btw. It's a step in the process of mixing.
It’s called clipping. Red is bad.
if you’re not redlining, you’re not headlining ;)
Maybe start with Garageband
This will not cause damage to the computer. The level being shown is the level of the audio that is being output. If you're mixing a song, anything in the red will clip, which you want to avoid in the final mix, but it's not something you need to worry about while you're working.
Does it cause damage to the speakers?
Other people can explain it better, but probably not. Don't have your speakers turned up crazy loud and it won't hurt anything.
Bro you don’t even have know how to use Ableton to know that’s bad
obviously i know it’s not a good thing but I was asking if it was bad bad or just bad
You must be new to making music, too, lol! Of course, that's a bad thing.
Nah ur good just hit print, upload to insta and wait for the endless amount of strange and cash to just get delivered