Question about mp3gain -- exactly what does clipping mean?

[statik213]

So I analyzed my mp3s and most of 'em are in the 95~100 db range, and it suggests a normal volume of 89 db.
1. It also has a red Y under clipping for most of em. What does this mean?
2. Some tacks have a red Y under clip(Track), what does that mean?

[gorcorps]

clipping is bad... it creates the little clicking sound in the background that you hear from bad rips as well as using mp3gain too high. Sometimes it's worse than others... but are you telling me that you haven't heard the distortion in the songs after you raised the vol?

[statik213]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
clipping is bad... it creates the little clicking sound in the background that you hear from bad rips as well as using mp3gain too high. Sometimes it's worse than others... but are you telling me that you haven't heard the distortion in the songs after you raised the vol?

Yes, haven't really noticed the clipping... hmmm.. so does it mean that there already is clipping or there will be clipping after normalizing?

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: statik213
So I analyzed my mp3s and most of 'em are in the 95~100 db range, and it suggests a normal volume of 89 db.
1. It also has a red Y under clipping for most of em. What does this mean?
2. Some tacks have a red Y under clip(Track), what does that mean?

Basically clipping is that you have a volume knob that goes from 0 to 10, but you are playing them with the knob turned to 11.

It's trying to use >100db but 100 db is the max. This will result in lost information. That lost information can sound really awful depending on the severity. It can also cause speakers to do some really unnatural things that can potentially damage them if played at high enough volume levels.

[statik213]

I normalized all my mp3s and things seem fine, I didn't notice any clipping in most of the mp3s before anyway.

Thanks!

[nineball9]

Draw a sine wave, erase the positive and negative peaks and replace them with flat horizontal lines. That's clipping!
(Easy to see clipping with a wave editor, or in electronics, with a scope.)

[statik213]

Originally posted by: nineball9
Draw a sine wave, erase the positive and negative peaks and replace them with flat horizontal lines. That's clipping!
(Easy to see clipping with a wave editor, or in electronics, with a scope.)

cool! that's easy to understand. So does clipping occur 'cos it was encoded at too high a volume?

[gibbyman]

The term clipping as used here is bad, what MP3 Gain does is NOT what we understand as clipping.
Clipping is what an amplifier does when over-driven, beyond the power/voltage available from the power supply, it, as described above, flattens the top and bottom of the waveform, this produces DC spikes which pushes the speaker cones to extremes and produces heat in the speech coil, thereby frying the speakers, this is very common especially with cheaper audio equipment that uses a bad progression on the Volume Control Pot'.

In the case of MP3 gain, which uses an extremely clever algorithm, it simply means that the program has modified the file, either up or down in level.
BTW what is 100DB the max of?
A decibel is a ratio, not an actual amount of anything when related to Gain and it's logarithmic, that is the least change the human ear can detect is 3db which is a doubling of power when related to wattage.
Some examples,
A Library - about 40db
Traffic 30 mtrs - 70db
Threshold of pain - 112db
Rock band crescendo - 120db
Instantaneous irreversible hearing damage - about 145db

Try this test if you like, rip an audio CD to 320kbs MP3, drop the results into MP3 Gain and do a track analasis, with the target set at 89db, you will probably see it saying the lot is clipping, then look see what levels the analysis says and set the target to the most common level, now it's not going to process those ones and the clipping thingy has gone.
The guy who wrote this program should have used a different term, using clipping in this context is misleading, due to the algorithm used MP3 gain will never introduce distortion.

Sorry just noticed the date on this thread, but nevertheless it may help someone.

[oynaz]

Originally Posted by gibbyman

Sorry just noticed the date on this thread, but nevertheless it may help someone.

Except for that the fact that you are wrong. Applying too much gain anywhere, including mp3gain, will exceed the dynamic range, thus resulting in clipping.

You are right that analog and digital clipping are two different things, but they are still clipping, and you want to avoid it.

Unless you are a modern music producer, where the loudness war has been taken taken to a ridiculous extreme - listen to Metallica's Death Magnetic for a glaring example.

[gibbyman]

Originally Posted by oynaz

Except for that the fact that you are wrong. Applying too much gain anywhere, including mp3gain, will exceed the dynamic range, thus resulting in clipping.

You are right that analog and digital clipping are two different things, but they are still clipping, and you want to avoid it.

Unless you are a modern music producer, where the loudness war has been taken taken to a ridiculous extreme - listen to Metallica's Death Magnetic for a glaring example.

Thing is with a floating number of bits, I.E. not limited to 16 as a conventional CD is, clipping in the digital sense should never occur, even if it does it's not distortion as such it's simply no increase in volume similar to compression-(limiting), without the analogue "breathing" effect.
What we are in fact talking about is the limitation of Dynamic Range of 16 bit 44Khz CD standard, but we are not dealing with this criteria, we are dealing digitally with something which is already digital, so providing the replay equipment can cope there is no audible problem.
Mind you I agree much recent "Pop"/Chart music is way over-modulated, trying to take advantage of the physiological effect of something louder sounding better to the untrained ear.
Truth is we could debate this back and forth for an eternity, simply because when something is subjective there can be no right or wrong.