exporting in wav results in clipping

[buffalo man]

after creating a song in cubase 6.5 i exported it out in diff formats and heres the results

1.) .wav 16 bit = clipping here and there and random pops but everything sounds fine in the DAW

2.) .wav 32 bit = same results as above


3.) only when i export in mp3 44khz 160 kpbs everything was clear and like what i hear in the DAW,i used 256 samples for the asio buffer size throughout all the formats

any help is appreciated thanks ppl

 

[blueprintstudios]

press F3. is your master fader at 0db ?make sure it doesn't clip/overload nonstop otherwise crackles/clipping are inevitable.

as for 3) assuming you're in the same situation as mine before when I started with cubase, this I'm not sure how right I am myself. I'll just try to explain anyway until someone gives a complete answer in theory the meantime. in some cases when you export as mp3 directly, it may export directly from a 32bit source mixing state where it "doesn't clip". what I mean is, if you export as 2) 32bit.wav, import into your cubase project, (right click on the .wav event > Process > Normalize) normalize that .wav to 0db, everything in the mix gets reduced to 0db at a "nonclipping stage" with full dynamics without anything getting truncated etc. but the mix becomes a lot softer.

does that mean that you should just export as mp3 so the clipping parts doesn't "clip" ? maybe it does but it's inaudible to untrained ears. should you go ahead with it? why not. as long as you like what you hear. even if it doesn't make sense in the world of mixing to be exporting to a lossy quality mp3 just cos your basic mixing skills can't put out a crackle-less .wav (1411kbps) but able to get away with a 160kbps-320kbps mp3 file. if it sounds right, feels right, go ahead after all it's only for your own personal works.

all these talk is of course assuming you're mixing your mix in a "clipped" but loud/clear/upfront sounding state as that opens another can of worms on The Loudness War. lets see if this solves your issue in the mean time.

 

[Cheez]

Can't comment on the clipping - that's certainly unusual. But pops are common in number of situations. What is your hardware (audio interface, PC specs)?

 

[buffalo man]

sorry guys i posted 3 days back idk why the post didnt come out!

@blueprint

my master fader is about -6.5 db,i purposely lowered it down so nothing will clip,i tried to normalise it but if its already at -6.5 db and i normalise everything even further down to -6.5db now it will be even softer right?

@cheez

my audio interface is a steinberg cl1 according to the manual its 24bit and 44.1/48 hz,my pc has a dual core processor,4gb ram,i turned off my anti virus while exporting as well and my asio buffer size is 256 samples,i didnt export with my audio interface plugged in would that be a cause of a prob?

and as usual i really appreciate all the help thanks !

 

[blueprintstudios]

buffalo man : when you export wav at -6.5 db, does it clip ? yes -6.5 db means it'll be softer. download this
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/w1-limiter-by-4front-technologies
and try add to taste on the master channel. see if it works. not too much, it'll squash.

on what you said to cheez this will be important : "i didnt export with my audio interface plugged in would that be a cause of a prob?" it could be contribute though I don't know how your cubase would run without the audio interface then the default ASIO drivers would be either asio4all or some other incompatible one i think? so make sure you have that plugged in.

 

[kongwee]

I do not own Cubase, I am pretty sure it is not the audio interface problem if you do offline bouncing.
If you are on deadline, download Reaper.
Edit and export individual tracks and mix it from there.

 

[blueprintstudios]

buffalo man : good luck restarting your learning curve all over again especially if you're on deadline. heh.

 

[Cheez]

Yes, blueprintstudio hit the nail on the head. You MUST have your audio interface plugged in. Disconnected, you go back to the default soundcard that comes with your notebook (or in the case of a PC - the motherboard built-in audio interface), which may not be optimized and may also be using other drivers other than ASIO.

The fact you mentioned turning off your antivirus showed that your notebook is not optimized. Presuming you are using a non-mac notebook, it's preferable to dual boot. The DAW boot partition should NOT have antivirus or any other software for that matter other than music related ones installed. Also noticed that you are using only 4GB of RAM, which I presume you are using a 32bit system. Consider moving to 64bit with 8GB RAM.

You didn't mention whether you are using an external drive. That is one of the most common cause of popping.

I'll let the sound engineers explain on the clipping. That issue is quite separate from pops and clicks, the latter of which I'm fairly familiar with as I fight with reducing that all the time when my system is taxed to the max with heavy sampling. I can only comment on your first post on "random pops". Just to make sure everybody is one the same page, perhaps it's better to post a short clip of your music so we are all in agreement that you are having issues with both clipping AND popping.

 

[blueprintstudios]

visualize mixing as (many people who I've spoken to when they asked me how to do a good mix know my trademark for this line heh) = making a kickass cup of ice milo dinosaur.

the ratio of gao-ness , the condensed milk vs sugar , the powder, the hot water to melt , and the cold water to fill er up, the ice to control the consumer's preference of sweetness/coldness and the powder to complete the "dinosaur" ontop.
the size of the cup = reverb, the EQ,compression,etc = the ingredients.
too much = too sweet, diluted, milky, room temperature, cold icy.

a limiter (like what I mentioned) is like putting a cap onto the cup, so you can fill'er'up without worries of overspilling. and overspilling is the part where it "clips". and over-filling = the cap bloats, and the contents get "squashed."

this should give you a better idea for your mix.

 

[buffalo man]

Hi guys its resolved,the problem was actually this choir sound that i used,it had this sort of hiss that went pretty high at some point,i wanted to try the limiter or even a compressor but i'm extremely new to those tools so in the end i just re-edited the velocity to keep the choir parts even and its ok now,no more distortion but what i really wana know is how come the meter on the transport bar didn't show that it is clipping but when i export it clips but then it only clips as a wav file but not as an mp3 file,i read a little about this gain staging thing is it something to do with that?

@blueprint

i used this asio4all v2 driver to export it out the file now it actually works lol but if i used the drivers with my audio interface is it like more superior or can i say like it actually converts better? its specs is 24 bit 96khz according to the manual

@cheez

with regards to the dual boot is it what i think it is,just partioning the C drive and naming the new one something like say E and then just moving cubase and all the audio files to that drive and use it solely for the DAW and its related audio files and nothing else?

my current acer laptop has C and a D drive but by external drive you mean like an external portable hard disk that is connected thru usb right? i didnt connect anything like that though.

In the end i exported using a buffer size of 1024 samples and all the pops and clicks were gone is that a common setting for bouncing tracks into wav or any other format?


and all the advice and help is really appreciated thanks !

 

[blueprintstudios]

yeap, if you relevelled velocity = relevel volumes.
I'm not sure on gain staging, http://www.alesis.com/tipsdec08 , from what I read what it means is , just keep it below 0db. hah.

to answer your qn : yes it converts better. ASIO4all uses your onboard soundcard, ASIO drivers for your audio interface uses.. well your audio interface. the money you paid for.

hope cheez don't mind me answering your question to him in case you need the answer faster - " NO, it's not just moving the program files\steinberg cubase installation etc to another drive. you will corrupt it doing that." what dual boot means is

Single HDD =
[Your HDD]----------[Your HDD]
[C:\#1]-------[D:\#2]---------
#1 = Windows installation for games,movies,etc
#2 = Windows installation purely for DAW.

Dual HDD =
[HDD1 : C:\#1] , [HDD2 : D:\#2] , [HDD3 : E:\Data]
#1,2 as above stated
Data = let your recording operate/save files to E:\ so it lightens up the load on D:

But you're using a laptop and all laptops usually only have 1 drive. so to directly save to another USB drive, I don't know, it may backfire in my opinion as I know sometimes even USB plugged in devices take up memory resources or the bus-power required to power up your audio interface. So far I've done fine with operating directly on the laptop main HDD but make sure there's sufficient ventilation to keep your laptop cool.
--
as for the solution you mentioned on setting buffersize haha turns out it's a latency issue. but I must say 1024 is a huge latency gap. usually I myself operate 512samples (cos I use a lot of CPU power), and most of the guys here operate 32,64,128,256. maybe when you record you can set at 256 for low latency recording, but at mixing stage you gotta reset it at 1024. and before I forget ,make sure you export THROUGH YOUR AUDIO INTERFACE's ASIO drivers. and try a lower latency setting too. if you're using 1024, could be because of the ASIO4ALL.

 

[Cheez]

Yes, dual boot is installing another copy of Windows in another drive. The rationale is this: with many software installed, even though some of them are not running, it takes up CPU and RAM resources IN THE BACKGROUND. The registry is also messier. With a clean install (in another boot partition), you should only have Windows and your DAW. Nothing else. You'll find Windows boot up and shut down faster, your DAW working faster etc. Don't even install unnecessary drivers in that boot partition (eg. SD card reader, built-in camera, not even the build-in audio card drivers - just disable all of them without installing any of those drivers). You'll be surprised how fast your notebook can become. DAW becomes smoother and you get lots more CPU and RAM freed up.

When you start up your machine, you notebook boots into a menu screen and ask you to select which partition to boot up into. Something like that:

That's not my boot screen, by the way. I named by partitions: "Work" and "DAW".

 

[Cheez]

Oh, forgot to add. If you got rid of the problem by changing the velocity of the choir patch, then your problem is with clipping, not so much pops and clicks. What patch/VST are you using?

If you are not using an external drive, I highly recommend that. Recording into the drive that Windows is running is not ideal esp if you are doing multiple tracks. Windows will still use that drive in the background (page file etc), so if you have heavy DAW usage, it competes with Windows also accessing that drive in the background. Furthermore, many built-in drives are only 5400rpm, which is not fast enough. The lifespan of that drive also decreases. One of my sound engineer friend told me that one of his sound engineer friend did life recordings with only one internal drive on a new notebook. It killed that drive within months. Firewire is recommended, but USB is also ok.

 

[blueprintstudios]

yo cheez the image is not showing i think, I'm getting this :

blueprintstudios, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.
-

I like to phrase a pcr>operating system installation like a car. if your laptop is a really fast turbo powered engine , but your car is filled with fat people and heavy goods, you still won't go faster than a car that's carrying just the driver with tuned aerodynamics etc. so don't install unnecessarily.

on my end I can only conclude mixed opinions with the single boot hdd 5400rpm and the lifespan of it. it depends on the user I guess, because I'm still using my free starhub complimentary HP/Compaq laptop 1.66ghz 2gb ram (upgraded myself , formerly 1gb) and 80gb hdd for live recording for the last 4 years (and still using) without issues. but the other thing that could have made possible is because I only work with 16bit 44.1khz (smaller filesize/cpu tax)
What reduces lifespan of HDD is heat and wear/tear.
Tear : if that guy throws his laptop around thinking it's an ipad,
Heat : or uses it on a soft-surface (bed) with poor ventilation (firehazard, many have fried their genitals or set fire to their beds and died) ,
Heat/Wear/Tear : or finally (this many consumers overlook) antivirus file monitoring, sure it scans your hdd, but ever transferred gigs of data with your antivir scanning each file being transferred realtime ? I know my HDD light goes full red if I do my usual terabyte backups. I have 15TB of hdds so this is my usual practice. so I usually have to fully disable it before I run the overnight backup.

both options work, it's just by experience see who it works well for. Cheez's option I tried before but it was too hard trying to maintain dual boot and I fried at least 3 of my USB PCB (I think that's what it's called) boards for the external hdds. and one on my laptop. a luck/fate factor as well.

 

[Cheez]

There's not much to maintain dual booting. It just sits there until it's called for. I've been dual booting all my machines for about 8 years (both notebooks and desktops), on different machines.

I've never fried any external HDD. I've been using external HDD for all my notebook setups for many years. The very first drive I have still sits in my drawer (stopped using it because it was so old and has limited storage, but still works!). Sounds like you are a magnet for bad drives . One tricky thing about external HDD is transportation. I'm very careful when I'm bringing it on a gig and make sure my gig bag has minimal jerking movements when I'm carrying it. And I get good external HDD as well - in the past I used Seagate, my current drive is Lacie.

Don't know what happened to the image. Will try to fix it.

 

[blueprintstudios]

actually all of my 18 hard disks are working fine, the rest threw for office/onboard vessel use (shipping company) , i meant the external housing of the USB interface or the USB port getting fried not the hdd. my last fried HDD is a quantum 3.2gb which was many years ago. Seagate's the better brand now, it used to be the king of bad sectors, but now maxtor/westernD/ibm,hitachi all drop standard. samsung drives are okay I think.

 

[Cheez]

Oh...yes, those can be dangerous. Used to do that - brandless housings for Seagates. But the casings got so flimsy that I don't trust them for gigs. Can't afford to have something die on me live. So my current Lacie is everything in one - HDD + casings under the single brand name. Nice casing too. Porsche designed - silver aluminium with cool blue LCD.

 

[blueprintstudios]

yeah brandless ones are definite no go for me, I was using the iCute brands which was alright, just that the data was too much to deal with I guess.

 

[kongwee]

I have a friend who do networking later into PC and most successful headphone/earphone shop, talk about the harddrive.
All drive like Seagate, WD, Toshiba.... All have about the same failure rate.
This is all depend on your luck.
I have a failure "red lego" Lacie HD(4 years running), it actually run hotter than I bought a buffalo brand recently.
Also I have that Lacie silver aluminum HD before I bought the buffalo brand.
That Porsche designed HD also run hotter than my buffalo brand.

 

[Cheez]

You're right, Kongwee. My Lacie is very hot - especially since I'm using it pretty heavily during sample streaming. It hasn't died yet - hope that's not a bad sign. I've been looking to changing to a larger capacity HD.