Audio clips/distorts well below zero

Audiose · 08-11-2022, 07:27 AM

Hi, I've been using reaper for about a year now. I've been tracking my band here and there, and now I'm starting to mix. I tracked drums with a tascam 16x8 interface. But while overdubbing guitars, bass, etc.the tempo was very unstable with the tascam, so I picked up a Universal Audio Volt 2 interface. Love the preamps on it (compared to the tascum) but now that I'm mixing down the Audio begins to distort/clip at about -6 to -4. If I mix up to that point it sounds great but not enough volume. I've been an audio engineer for the last 20 years. Mainly a pro tools guy until I started hearing so many good things about reaper. I always had a secret boner for acid pro, and Reaper is like a hotrodded version of that so....... but anyway, I also have a soundcraft signature 12MTK.I f you think it would be worthwhile I can give it a shot. Please help, my bandmates are savages, and they're getting restless.

JonLinnarson · 08-12-2022, 01:51 AM

Do you have any plug-ins that could be the cause for the distortion? Is it only the master track that distorts, or does this happen for every individual track? You are not giving us much to go on.

Reaper itself can't be the cause for the distortion since it uses a 64-bit floating point engine, which means you could go well above 0dB without distorting/clipping. If you hear some distortion it's most likely some plug-in in your project or maybe you are clipping your DAC somehow.

Do a render of your project and see if it the render status window tells you if you have some intersample peaks that are clipping. You should probably set your master level meter to display Oversampled peaks ("true" peak).

Audiose · 08-12-2022, 04:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonLinnarson

Do you have any plug-ins that could be the cause for the distortion? Is it only the master track that distorts, or does this happen for every individual track? You are not giving us much to go on.

Reaper itself can't be the cause for the distortion since it uses a 64-bit floating point engine, which means you could go well above 0dB without distorting/clipping. If you hear some distortion it's most likely some plug-in in your project or maybe you are clipping your DAC somehow.

Do a render of your project and see if it the render status window tells you if you have some intersample peaks that are clipping. You should probably set your master level meter to display Oversampled peaks ("true" peak).

It's possible, I will disable plugs 1 by 1 to try and figure it out. I haven't noticed it on any particular track. Of course with 20 some tracks, none of them are hitting anywhere near 0. It seems like it is occurring in the master bus. Actually all of the tracks are a "less hot" than I generally shoot for. Mainly the only plugs that I am using is the 1175 compressor and the 3 band eq. Not a fan of ANY of the reverb/delay in the stock plugs. But I am fully versed in gain staging, and none of the tracks are even close to 0. I feel like it may be an issue with the DAC. I will try the soundcraft interface this evening and see if it helps. Sorry if I am not "giving you much to go on" not really well versed on computers, however I have never had these issues in 20 years of pro tools usage. Thank you for your help!

JonLinnarson · 08-12-2022, 10:01 AM

The plug-ins would be the first thing to check. The JS: 3-band EQ plug-in shouldn't be able to cause distortion in any way, but the 1175 comp can (especially with low release time settings). Make sure also that you don't have any plug-ins in the monitor FX-chain that might be causing the unwanted distortion. People sometimes manages to add plug-ins to the monitor FX-chain by mistake and then forgets to check if it's clear.

If it's the DAC then it probably is something wrong with your interface :/ UAD usually has great QC and overall quality, but even they can sometimes ship out faulty interfaces.

Stella645 · 08-12-2022, 10:59 AM

Quote:

It seems like it is occurring in the master bus.

So what levels do you get on the master bus meters and what plugs if any are on the master bus. Also do you have any plugs in monitor FX?

vdubreeze · 08-12-2022, 03:47 PM

Make sure that the distortion you're hearing isn't monitoring clipping at that level after Reaper, either to your speakers' amp, the headphone amp, etc.

serr · 08-15-2022, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Audiose

But while overdubbing guitars, bass, etc.the tempo was very unstable with the tascam...

The speed doesn't coast around on digital devices like a tape deck like where you could hear audible wow/flutter from transport issues. If you hear the speed change in a digital system, there would have to be mad levels of dropouts and communication errors. Normally you'd expect the sound to simply be cut before that happens but it can happen. The point is, if that level of crashing and burning is going on, it's really likely that anything recorded during that is dropout riddled to the point of significant distortion and not salvageable. It wouldn't be "just some little speed issue". It would be "the system is crashed - can't very well record anything!"

If that's miscommunication or reading too much into a not actual verbatim comment, apologies. That comment hit like a big red flag though!

JonLinnarson · 08-16-2022, 02:14 AM

Reading serr's comment I came to think of dropouts/glitches/crackling. Is this what you are hearing, or is it more like regular distortion (like from a distortion plug-in)?

If the distortion you are hearing gets printed when you render a song it could be helpful to post a short clip so we can hear what's going on.