CD Rip reults in overload

[bobbybrave]

I have a CD which I am trying to rip. When I record from records, I can set the level to avoid wavefiles that overload. Since a CD is already in the digital domain, I assume there is no point or way to set the levels. But I have a CD that successfully rips and when I bring the wavefile up in Diamond Cut 7 , the wavefile shows many overloaded sections. If this were a record, I would rerecord it with lower levels, but it comes this way from the factory.
Is this a common occurrence? The CD sounds OK when I play it in a player, but maybe my ears aren't good enough to know how it should sound. Other CDs will rip to acceptable levels.

[Craig Maier]

Yup - - - that seems to be all the rage these days with pop CDs. I have seen many that are overloaded and some that just look like a thick black stripe across my time domain display screen with it touching the the top and the bottom throughout. I guess it provides more of a "grunge" sound. Obviously the masses like it or they would not do it.

If you do not like it, you can always de-clip it using the Diamond Cut de-clipper feature.

[DougMac]

Here Comes 'Ol Flat Top

I bought the "John Waters Christmas" CD. I was a little disappointed in the sound of some of the cuts, but attributed it to the sources, which were often the record.

When I went to rip a few of the cuts I noticed that they were flat topped bad. I know that John Waters is a big music collector, I wonder if he knew that CD was butchered in the mastering.

OTOH, I've noticed that a lot of early CD's never get above -5 or even -10 db, I guess the engineers were being very cautious in their masters.

Craig, last night I restored a Sam Levinson 78. Side one was "Basic Yiddish for Business" and side two was "Kosher Kalories". It's nice gentle humor with even some jokes us goyim can get!
Doug

[Craig Maier]

Doug,

We used to consider it almost a sin to clip a digital master recording. No accounting for taste. Go figure! Compression is one thing, but clipping is an ugly affair.

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Quoting Doug:

"Craig, last night I restored a Sam Levinson 78. Side one was "Basic Yiddish for Business" and side two was "Kosher Kalories". It's nice gentle humor with even some jokes us goyim can get!"

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Yeah, some of that old stuff is pretty funny and it seems to hold up over time. I have a whole collection of inherited 78s with Yiddish / Jewish humour. Two Victor acoustical sides that come to mind and are very funny are by Barney Bernard. The titles are:

Cohen on the Telephone

&

Goldstein Goes in the Railroad Business

What a hoot!

[bobbybrave]

Thanks for the reassurance that it's not uncommon. I will try the declipper and see if I can hear the difference. I sometimes have ringing in my ears, and the doctor said it was too many loud rock concerts in the 60's. This was a rerelease collection of The Travelling Wilburys that my wife got me. I do have the original CD somewhere and I'm going to rip it and see if it isn't "flat topped". It was from the early 90's.
Before the days when you could record to CD's , I bought a DAT deck that I hoped would replace my reel to reels. And they said to NEVER let the meter go into the red. I thought the noise would be deafening if you did. But I guess what you say is in modern times, the noise is music.

[Geebster]

Thanks for the reassurance that it's not uncommon. I will try the declipper and see if I can hear the difference. I sometimes have ringing in my ears, and the doctor said it was too many loud rock concerts in the 60's. This was a rerelease collection of The Travelling Wilburys that my wife got me. I do have the original CD somewhere and I'm going to rip it and see if it isn't "flat topped". It was from the early 90's.
Before the days when you could record to CD's , I bought a DAT deck that I hoped would replace my reel to reels. And they said to NEVER let the meter go into the red. I thought the noise would be deafening if you did. But I guess what you say is in modern times, the noise is music.

I've experimented a bit with attempting to de-clip an oversaturated CDs. Sometimes they sound better; sometimes they just don't quite sound "right".

I think it's music dependent.....It seems that the intentional oversaturation of levels helps duplicate the "sound" (noise?) of some groups live. I attempted to de-clip the band Korn's first CD and it didn't sound nearly as good as the oversaturated version. They do all kind of things like de-tuning their instruments to arrive at their sound and the oversaturation may be part of the puzzle.

[Craig Maier]

I am not sure about the reason for the sound of clipping, but if you de-clip using Diamond Cut there is a very important step that you need to do first.

You must reduce the signal level (using the gain change feature) to reduce the signal level down by 4 to 6 dB. That way, the de-clipper algorithm has the head room to interpolate a new signal.

keywords: de-clipping gain reduction

[Craig Maier]

How to Clip a Signal with Diamond Cut

If you want to create clipping with Diamond Cut, it is quite easy to do. At the end of an audio project, just use "Normalize Gain Scaling" set to a value greater than 0.0 dB and up to as high as 9.9 dB. Obviously, the higher the dB number set, the greater the clipping distortion. I think that it is a good idea to use the Punch and Crunch effect or the Dynamics Processor first and set with to compressor mode to help normalize the gains of the signals first - - - but that is a matter of personal taste and that step can be omitted if desired.

Personally, I like my signals to be kept clean and with the maximum dynamic range possible, but to each his own.

keywords: creating clipping distortion