Internal clipping with normalized samples?

[jbone1313]

What OS are you using?

1.30D

I played with normalised samples this morning on OT mk1 running 1.30something without any distorsion/clipping.

Thanks for doing that test. Did you setup a record buffer to listen to the output of your track and monitor it using the LED as described here?

MKII - killer feature - INT - monitoring

Sorry for the scoop, MKI does it ! MKI Midi button (and led) corresponds to MKII REC3. You have to be in Rec Setup though. Rec Setup needed for MKII or not? And the funny thing is that with that MKI Midi button you can multiply loops with Pickups, MKII can’t. Anyway it’s good to remind it, it’s an interesting meter workaround. Input ABCD meter :

A good test might be to use a normalized sine wave. I do not have one handy at the moment. If I get some time, I might try that later.

If you normalised within the OT, could it be the algo inside that’s the issue?

The ones I am testing were normalized in OT.

Bear in mind that the internal mixbus of the OT is fixed point, not floating point (not sure how many bits accumulator it has though). Fixed point summing, especially if using a lowres bit accumulator, clips very easily.

Agree; thanks for the comment. I definitely think that is the main issue. It is just odd that a setting of 0 on AMP VOL clips normalized samples like that. I would think they would have calibrated AMP VOL so that you had more headroom to turn it up before clipping. Of course, that would not change the facts about fixed point architectures, just the user experience of what 0 means on AMP VOL.

I.e., how many users are working with normalized samples and default AMP VOL settings and not realizing they are clipping the OT’s internal mix bus? Ouch!