I have tried searching the User Guide and the Community but still have these questions:
Does the order of the PEQ Bands matter?
With Volume Leveling set to Auto, does it ensure that no clipping will occur?
If not, what tracks should I play to see if I have clipping? Greatest DR or Track Gain? And if I need to apply negative gain, should I do it in the PEQ or enable Headroom Management?
FYI I am using OmniMic software from Dayton Audio and one of their mics to measure and apply room correction.
I believe that volume leveling necessarily does its thing prior to the peq. So it will not help with clipping. Use headroom management for that. Also try not to use too much boost in the peq. Unless your trying to correct a problem with the original recording , a boost to the low end and a boost to the high is typically all you need , ymmv.
But I have to ask what hardware are you using to get a processing speed of 56?
I’ve never thought about the order of the bands in the peq. I have always thought of it like my old 32 band graphic eq!, as the curve is about the same. Not sure it would matter.
There is a clipping indicator option I think in the head room portion of the DSP section. You could use that to see if you are clipping while playing a file. But I if you apply some negative headroom and your eq is mostly cuts I’m pretty sure you are looking to solve a problem that you don’t have?
You could experiment with the peq and the clipp8ng indicator to see what it would take to clip, but I would keep volume on your receiverto almost zero or at zero - you don’t want to send that output to your system.
Also if you ripped the files digitally the file itself should not have any clipping. It’s the processing that you apply that might cause clipping - but I think you are doing all the right things to avoid it.
I usually set the gain in the PEQ preset because some presets require different headrooms, based on the amount of changes in frequency gain. Headroom is for the overall DSP preset, but say you have more than one headphone or set of speakers and each requires its own PEQ preset, then you need a gain adjustment for each. Unless, of course, you set the DSP preset headroom in such a way that it covers all possible changes in frequency gain. Something like -9 db will stop the clipping on most PEQ presets, assuming you are not going to extremes (7-9db and above). Please take into consideration the graph generated by the PEQ when setting the headroom. You might increase one frequency with 2db but based on the q value and the rest of the bands, the actual db increase could be bigger. So adjust based on the curve of the graph and not the absolute db value you set for that band.
Pretty sure I wasnt kidding. I don’t listen to hip hop but I’ve picked up a thing or two about recording (digital and analog) through the years.
If the clipping is included in the original “bad recording” or transfer to disk that you mention then there is nothing you can do on the playback side to eliminate it. You could make it softer with a careful use of a narrow Q band from the PEQ but it will always and forever be baked into the cake.
If on the other hand the original recording is not clipping but has a larger dynamic range than most , then yes, clipping could be likely and eliminated by adding head room on the playback side.
Bumping the thread: Had (have?) some issues with clipping after changing preamp/processor and at the same time employing a balanced signal path for front speakers.
First encounter was when playing CD, with evident clipping on several piano/vocal tracks I know well. Admittedly I first mistook the signal overload / clipping as a potentially worn-out laser unit in the old CD player.
When switching to Roon, to my dismay plying Tidal produced the same (or potentially even worse) clipping.
Reading this thread on headroom management and volume levelling I did some tests with these settings - but decided that it could be me barking up the wrong tree IF the CD would sound normal when lowering the balanced output level from the DAC to the pre/processor input.
Lo and behold, This proved to be true and now I don’t have to refurbish the CD and I’ve swithed off DSP headroom and volume levelling in Roon I merely turned down the DAC output from the fixed ”100” setting to ”95”.
Clipping occurs primarily in the analogue domain if I’m not mistaken. Correcting a signal level digitally to fix a problem with overloading the input stage of a preamp is possible - but is it desireable?
Both fixes work. And the ”volume” setting in the DAC (in my case a Bel Canto 2.5), is also a digital correction if I’m not mistaken.
In my opinion an analogue matching of out/input signal levels would mean less tampering with the aidio bitstream and make best use of the analogue device, correct?
And since I can’t do an analogue adjustment of tje balanced signal levels in my set-up, I will always have a non-bit-perfect digital chain I guess?
I merely turned down the DAC output from the fixed ”100” setting to ”95”.