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Old 2005-03-30, 05:04 PM
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Lou Lou is offline
VH NEW ORLEANS 7/13/78
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Philadelphia, PA USA
Clipping in wave files--question

Question for you all. As you may have read I've been doing tape transfers from a tape deck to a standalone. I like to have the recording level as loud as possible without ever hitting the "red" zone.

What is the acceptability in terms of clipping? My standalone has a gauge which lets you know if it's going over 0 dB. At which point, if I see that, I rewind and start the process again at a softer volume. I always test out the volume before recording, but sometimes the volume can fluctuate in a tape, get louder all of a sudden or softer all of a sudden if the taper got knocked around, so it's not always easy to get it right the first time.

So what do you do if there's one or two instances of clipping? Let's say for example the taper hits his microphone really loud which makes the db meter go in the red, but other than that everything's golden and the peak level is under 100%. I take it it's OK to leave the volume where it is and a bump here or there doesn't have to be worried about. But then what if it's 10 seconds of really loud volume? 15 seconds? My concern is that I don't want to transfer at a soft volume for the sake of 15 seconds which happen to be really loud.

What's the consensus on this?
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