Why does my audio clip without exceeding 0db

[Unannounced Guest]

Hey so,
yeah

I'm making this track...production went smooth, the mix is smooth... it's a booming track, everything went super smooth.. and it sounds tight

However! when I try to master it and push the volume a little with the limiter, the track starts to clip on the kicks like crazy

The whole track is max -6db at all times (pre fx master volume) so I have plenty of headroom

I've checked everything (i think)
no bad cuts in audio clips or weird attacks/releases on synths what so ever.
my buffer is open to the max... (60 to 70 % cpu with izotope 5 on the master)

the audio does not exceed 0db anywhere.. as I said I leave plenty of headroom..
So when I put a limiter on the master it actually isn't doing anything in terms of reduction because it seems there isn't much to reduce

but when I push the volume on any limiter I try (ableton/izotope/fabfilter) only a little bit... say 3 db's
it start to clip on the kicks like crazy and I can not seem to get a grasp on what's causing it/ how to solve it

the track is quite loud (not winning the loudness wars though)

But I never had this problem before not even when I didn't have a lot of headroom to work with and I did push the volume in the limiter a lot so it had to reduce the audio a lot

it would get messier and uglier, growling from the volume reduction but it never clipped like this before

no nasty clicking clips and only on the kicks

how is this possible... ?? how do I solve it?

Does anyone have experience with this?

Thanks in advance! Peace!

[Stromkraft]

the track is quite loud (not winning the loudness wars though)

So why even bother increasing it with a Limiter? Why just not let it kiss the audio? Have you tried just selecting all tracks and lower the faders 1dB? At what level do these limiters start to work? What are the release settings? Ceiling settings?

how is this possible... ??

Oh, it's possible because of what you did. You just need to find out what that is.

[Unannounced Guest]

thanks for replying stormkraft

So why even bother increasing it with a Limiter? Why just not let it kiss the audio? Have you tried just selecting all tracks and lower the faders 1dB? At what level do these limiters start to work? What are the release settings? Ceiling settings?

well like I said allthough the track is loud it's still mixed down at -6DB and I want the track to be as loud as other ''professional'' tracks in the genre (hiphop/trap/edm)
(tracks that when you put them in ableton always seem to go +3 DB according to Ableton's volume meters)

So with audio at -6db the limiter with a ceiling at 0db isn't doing anything.. and if i turn it up +3db it still shouldn't be doing anything... but it is... it's wrecking my kicks...
the izotope maximizer even reads plus 1...

is that Ableton's volume meters fucking with me?

Oh, it's possible because of what you did. You just need to find out what that is.

Yes I understand.. but I mean... what could I have done that is causing this to happen.... i've going back and forth looking at the problem but currently I'm at a loss/ drawing blanks... so i thought maybe someone else has had the same problem

[Unannounced Guest]

I think the problem was the CPU though... although the buffer was fully open and it was steady at 70%

Today I just reopened the file .... and there's no more clipping/clicking on the kicks although I'm going through the same process..
Cpu still 70% though...

[Stromkraft]

Good that it seems to be working now. Maybe it was a background process outside of Live that stole your CPU cycles. I had some dropboxupdate thing do that last night. Force quit!

[Unannounced Guest]

Good that it seems to be working now. Maybe it was a background process outside of Live that stole your CPU cycles. I had some dropboxupdate thing do that last night. Force quit!

I guess so.. although I turn my internet off when I'm producing.. I might have forgotten to do so last time

it's just weird cause I went through everything... even shutting down unnecessary programs... could it be that it was because the pc was running for a long time?

[Stromkraft]

it's just weird cause I went through everything... even shutting down unnecessary programs... could it be that it was because the pc was running for a long time?

I don't know, but I believe this probably not so. Occasionally, one may get to the point that you at least need a restart. Simply because this is faster than finding the processes that may be intermittently stealing cycles. But my MacBook Pros usually run 24/7 and I've never noticed uptime do be detrimental. On the other hand every machine is somewhat different.