Vegas dB S/N ratio?! pleasehelpmeOB1

[Ivon]

Vegas is set for receiving input signals at -6 dBs. Watching the meter while I record, the meter indicates that the signal is not clipping...when I play back the recorded track, however, there is obvious clipping. Should I not trust the Vegas input meters when tracking? Has anyone experienced this clipping when recording vocs or acoustic guitar? How should I go about compensating for this difference in dB acceptance? I've never had this clipping problem running the same setup to my console. I'm new to PC (not politcally correct, mind you) recording. If anyone has suggestions and/or experience with Vegas in particular, please ... help ............. me. The clipping is making me mad!

Ivonoviche Stankowski

[JamesHE]

Vegas is set for receiving input signals at -6 dBs. Watching the meter while I record, the meter indicates that the signal is not clipping...when I play back the recorded track, however, there is obvious clipping. Should I not trust the Vegas input meters when tracking? Has anyone experienced this clipping when recording vocs or acoustic guitar? How should I go about compensating for this difference in dB acceptance? I've never had this clipping problem running the same setup to my console. I'm new to PC (not politcally correct, mind you) recording. If anyone has suggestions and/or experience with Vegas in particular, please ... help ............. me. The clipping is making me mad!

Ivonoviche Stankowski

I'm not exactly sure I follow you. If the signal hits 0db it's clipping. The record meters in vegas don't go over 0db, they just turn red to indicate that it's clipped. Just keep your levels in check, you don't need to slam the converters especially if your are recording at 24 bits.

[Everybody's X]

Sonic Foundry stuff shows clipping on things that arent clipping in anything else. I have mastered stuff with wavelab and played it back with sound forge and SF shows it clipping all over the place. I wouldn't trust the metering. If your hardware isn't showing the clip then I wouldn't worry about it. It should be noted that I use ancient versions of wavelab and Sound forge, so maybe their metering is more accurate but it sounds like your dealing with the same issues. As far as vegas goes, make sure your master bus isn't sitting too hot, as well as the outs on any plugin
And as stated earlier, you don't need to hit it that hard in digital. You aren't going to get any cool saturation or anything like you would with tape. Personally I run everything in at -12, leaves me plenty of headroom for processing, eq, etc.

[dr grip]

I have one of the original 20 bit MOTUs and this happens to me sometimes when recording at 24 bits, IF I watch the software meters instead of the LEDs on the unit.

The hardware has less headroom than the software, and the hardware is first...so Vegas is recording a signal that's getting clipped by the inferior dynamic range of the 20 bit converters. The software sees it as all under 0db, but it's already squared out.