Ryan wrote:
I know what clipping sounds like during recording. It is pretty
obvious. I don't know what the technical term is, but I know when you
look at an audio file of almost any new hard rock CD in your DAW, the
waves looked clipped.

Yes, that's clipping.

The graphic looks to big for the space it's in,
and the tops and bottoms of the waves are no longer round, but flat.
I guess these are considered square waves. However, I usually can't
hear anything unmusical resulting from this occuring.

You need better monitors. The distortion that results from this is
really offensive with decent monitoring. The effect is very, very
unmusical.

It does not
sound anything liked trying to digitaly record a signal that's too
strong for your IO card. The only thing I notice about these
recordings is that there really aren't any quiet parts. Everything is
always super loud, even the parts which are supposed to be the quiet
building type parts that build up to a climax. But I don't hear
anything harsh or rackety about them.

The lack of quiet parts is mostly cause by overcompression. The overlimiting
that causes flattopping is a second problem (but really a second part of
the same fundamental issue). And yes, they really do sound harsh if you
listen carefully.. the thing is that they sound universally harsh throughout,
so it's not as if you are hearing an undistorted section compared with a
distorted section, like you do when you clip peaks on recording.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."