My stereo out is clipping even though all channels playing at -10dbfs!

Great thread learned a few things thanks to all…

Had another session with my tutor last night, the peaks were caused by a two separate drum tracks playing in unison… peaking on the kick drum. Just needs the arrangement sorting to solve or skim off the low end on the duplicate channel.

I also had all my Pre -racks bypassed, so none of my gain adjustments were actually doing much good! haha!

1 Like

Hi, in terms of clip gain adjustments … I’ve been using the Audio>Process> Gain function on different regions i make as i move along left to right in the audio event.

Using regions seems kind of awkward ergonomically, but it’s better than chopping the event into a zillion pieces and adjusting each of those clip gains IMO.

What is the best way to adjust clip gains?

Thank you!

There are several ways to change the level of an audio track, each with its own advantages and disadvantages

  • direct offline processing for the audio clip. A bit tedious imho. Changes the gain of the audio itself, so if you have many events in the arrangement based on that clip, it might be faster

  • event envelopes aka “pencil tool”. Only allows you to decrease the level. Very tedious to use imho.

  • event volume. Can be very fast if you enable the preference “use mouse wheel for event volume and fades”, but you might need to chop the event into pieces for different levels

  • pre-gain. Not the worst option, and you if precise control is needed, you can be very quick if you use the select tool for automating it

(I’m sure I even missed some option :slight_smile: )

Personally, for gain staging I use event volume if there are single events on the track that are significantly louder than all the others, pre gain for overall gain staging and pre gain automation if I really need to go into details (e.g. leveling out very dynamic vocals)

It would be really nice if Cubase had clip gain like e.g. Protools, though.

1 Like

Sounds like you have to mix it first, before mastering :slight_smile:

1 Like

@fese -

This is great stuff, thank you!

I am not as much a fan of the two automation methods, since i like to be able to visually glance at the waveforms to get a rough idea of their volumes before i make a first pass at leveling out their volumes.

I am very familiar with splitting/chopping up the vocals and adjusting the gain of each new segment with the “increment/decrement volume” function, but the idea of splitting up the track like that bugs me … too many opportunities for me to make dumb mistakes down the road.

Could you explain please how you are using the direct offline processing? I’m making a region, then calling up that function, but three are so many clicks i wonder if I’m doing it wrong/there’s a more efficient way.

Thank you again for that great summary!

I don’t actually use DOP for gain changes, exactly because it is too tedious. You could probably create workarounds with different DOP presets for differenent gain changes and calling those with macros, but I’ve never bothered, because I am fine with my current workflow.
Still, I’d love to have proper clip gain in Cubase…

@fese -

Got it … Thank you again!

@alexis

You can use “normalize” to bring all events to a common level and
assigning a key command to it makes it really fast…

The problem here is that with “normalize” you have to be careful. “Peak Normalize” is pretty much useless, “Loudness Normalize” is a bit better, but with very dynamic material you can get clipped audio if you normalize too “hot” (although if you normalize to say -20dBLUFS, it should probably be fine most of the time except maybe for some edge cases).
(I didn’t actually know that by now Cubase can normalize to LUFS, so thanks @st10ss for making me aware of that)

If we want to nit-pick a bit then I think it’s true that the offline processes actually create new audio files on disk. So I’m wondering just what type of files they are, if they are saved according to the projects set bit-depth or to an independent bit-depth.

The reason I’m wondering this is because if you set your project to 24-bit fixed point for recorded files and DOP saves at that format then every time you change gain you get quantization noise at some point which can reduce the usable dynamic range. Very likely no problem if it happens only once, but if it happens several times (not using undo, but one time after another) you could bring noise up.

So to me it seems that if that’s the case it would make more sense to use a non-destructive process like clip-gain instead since it should be using the actual 32-bit float process… I think

The only time I use DOP is when I’m using a short sample because I can import it, highlight it, press F7 and select gain. Then if I copy that sample and change the gain or anything else via DOP it will then give me the option to change all the copies at once or create a new one. That handy because I have control over that sample and all it’s copies wherever they are or which ever tracks they are on in the project with one update.

Other then that I do not use it. But there are always lots of ways to achieve the same thing.

I’m rather hoping DOP uses the same audio properties as the project.

No, they are saved according to the project settings. You can see that if open the DOP files in the “Edits” folder

Never thought about that, but it seems you’re right. I did a bit of testing, and for each process in the DOP a separate file is rendered, and that happens cumulatively, i.e. say your first process is gain reduction, new file. Next you call up maybe a filter, that will be read from the gain edit file and written to a new file. And so on. So in case of 24bit fixed point, there will happen multiple conversions from and to 32bit float, if I tested correctly.

I then did a test where I took a 32 bit 997Hz sine wave file at -1dbFS, ran it through DOP with “polarity flip” and routed the resulting files to a bus where I had SPAN. There is definitely some noise, slowly increasing in level in the higher frequencies, reaching -156dBFS at ~20KHz. This is still waay less than any converter/speaker/room noise, of course.
Most likely not a problem, just something to be aware of.

Or just set your project bit depth to 32 float, if you want to be cautious and do a lot of DOP. Sure, file size will be bigger, but that is usually not that much of a problem nowadays.

For simple gain setting I find event gain much quicker anyway…

(this thread is becoming increasingly off topic, but very interesting :slight_smile:

1 Like

There are a couple of ways to minimize the risk

  • Before you start slicing Audio make a Duplicate Version of the Track so you can retain the uncut Audio.
  • After cutting Lock the Track - but that locks everything so maybe/maybe-not
  • Select all the slices and convert the Audio Events into an Audio Part which can pretty much function like the original unsliced Audio Event
  • Edit>Group lets you group multiple Events, Parts, Markers, etc. so they move together as a block

Hi @raino ,

Thanks for the tips!

I’m currently doing a combo of #1 and #2, duplicating the track, locking the original trash, (haha,- psycho typo, I meant “track”!), and working on the dup’d track. It makes for a messy project, all these tracks just sitting there, all locked and stand offish. I just realized i could use visibility to hide them, so that might be OK.

Your idea of using parts sounds interesting, I’ll look at that also, thanks!

I see what I wrote was a bit ambiguous. I didn’t mean to make another Track by duplicating it. I meant to make a new Version on that Track that is a Duplicate Version (rather than a New Version). Then you can just flip back and forth between the edited and unedited Versions of the Track.

Or with better names

image

Ah, track versions … Thank you! @raino