Mastered Tracks Clipping my master?

[Danefoster91]

Can someone please shed some light onto this problem I am having because I really just don't understand it at all, like it actually doesn't make any sense to me what so ever.

How on earth are you supposed to mix and master your tracks when your kick drums sound weak as hell when your master is in the green? I try to boost my kick and bass because trust me... it isn't even remotely loud, like at all... and my music sounds incredibility weak and flat if I don't have my kick and bass in the red.

Also, without touching the master, or the audio channel, if I drag and drop an already mixed and mastered wav. track in Ableton...my master is clipping like hell..

How is this even possible? That means, going by this logic, that if you try to mix and master your track not even half as loud as another tracksyou're guna be in the red zone on your master... So how on earth are you even supposed to mix anything when literally any boost you do just puts you straight in the red. I cannot get my music to sound good without it being in the red.

According to paz anayzler... my kick is only hitting -13db but the master says it is clipping... bro...

[Tarekith]

When you drag a mastered track into Live, make sure you turn off warping on that audio file too otherwise the warping could be causing it to clip. Same with MP3s, when those get to converted to wav files in Live there is the potential for clipping due to that process, this happens in all DAWs.

Usually when mastering your own tracks It's important onto use a quality limiter as the last step in your mastering process to catch those peaks. Unless I'm not understanding your question. Maybe this will help too:

https://tarekith.com/articles/Mastering.pdf

[Danefoster91]

Thank you for taking your time to reply and to answer my question.

I tried clicking warp to unwarp the WAV but it didn't really make any difference. I can understand why a limiter would be used but that wouldn't justify my kicks clipping at the likes of -13 db, its a complete joke.

[ToneShop]

Hi ,

Just to make sure, you’re channels are free of any plug-ins and faders are at 0?

[Shift Gorden]

Sounds like there is something very wonky going on here...low signal is clipping.

The only thing I can think of is that your kick is clipping inside of Sampler, Kontakt, Kick 2 or whatever you're using for your kicks. Check the device output (NOT the track output) isn't in the red. Happens more than you think - very easy to overlook.

Any help?

[jestermgee]

Your image is not showing so can't see that.

A mastered track can clip depending on the encoding if it is MP3 and what your tracks faders are set to, what effects you have, what warp setting. You need to setup correct gain staging to test a reference track so things should be at unity gain for a start.

If you have to push into the red to make it sound "good" you probably need to start your mixing over and instead because you are doing shit wrong, pull everything down and start with your kick and bass then bring stuff back up to the level you like. You need to EQ and tame the bass/kick together, maybe some sidechain, maybe roll off the bottom end of the kick so it doesn't clash with the bass, maybe you need a different kick or another bass. Also, a phase analyser between the bass/kick may show your signals out of phase and that could also be the cause of your issue. Maybe some odd high harmonics on the kick or bass, maybe some grit/distortion could help, maybe the bass signal is too clean, maybe the kick signal does not have enough punch in the right area, maybe some notching will help, possibly both kick and bass are both too low in freq to be perceived as "loud"........ lots of things to potentially try, but you kind of need some skills in that area to know what to even attempt. If all you can do is just crank shit up till it distorts, you need to learn some new skills in the area.

Without a good decade of experience in the field of mixing and mastering you are bound to struggle a bit. That is why there are people in the world who specialise just in this one area of audio and why almost every successful artist/band hands that job over to people that know what they are doing because chances are, you don't and may never fully understand how to make things work perfectly but you may get close after some years of practice, just don't expect miracles from yourself in the meantime.

[RaisingWolves]

I realise this is resurrecting an old thread - but I just discovered, if you disable the HiQ button in clip view, along with turning off warping, this could solve the issue. Additional encoding occurs with HiQ enabled (not what you want on a mastered track playing back within Live), which could result in louder peaks above 0db.