Occasional vertical red line in progress bar

My core is a late 2012 Mac mini (16gb/1tb ssd). It plays great, but I am seeing the occasional red vertical line popping up in the progress bar. Red lights are never a good thing. I am asking if anyone here has experienced this, and what should I do as a remedy. Or should I just leave well enough alone?

Thanks.

MIKE

Clipping?

That is exactly what it looks like. What can I do about it? Thanks

Dunno. Take the advice that’s in the KB article I linked to?

Sorry, I missed the link first time through. Thanks a lot!

The red vertical line in the progress bar is normal. A red signal path light, indicating clipping, is not.

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I will try it both ways. In truth, there seemed to be no degradation of the sq when the red line appeared. First time with this Mac mini as a dedicated core, so I will add a touch of headroom and see what happens. Thanks.

I can’t eliminate the red line, adding headroom has made no difference. At the point of playback, I hear no degradation of the sound quality when clipping is detected,

So, to ally my concerns, I have found a solution. Simply turn off the clipping notification.

Any downside to this?

The downside is: it is still clipping. If it does not occur very often and you don‘t mind the difference, go with disabling the indicator.

Personally I’d try to avoid clipping at all cost, as it‘s a distortion that can be avoided.

To do that you can either increase headroom by e.g. another 3 dB.
Or use volume levelling - which I prefer. I listen to a lot of playlists and this evens out the varying volume levels of different source material. I adjust the function with songs with known ”clipping points”. The downside is: it’s a bit more complicated to set up.

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Philipp: I have increased the headroom, plus I, too, use volume leveling. But I still get the clipping notice. My experience is that I see the red line only on files from my personal library. No clipping on Qobuz files or internet radio playback. As I said, I do not hear a degradation of sound quality, so it is a minor distraction at this point.

It seems to me that there’s some confusion as to what indicates clipping.


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Yes, is it ‘occasional’ or ‘vertical red line’? It can’t be both.

Well, that is good to know. Thank you. Upon further review, it isn’t a clip after all.:grin:

Oh, yes it can be! Comes and goes.

That may be, but if you’re referring to the vertical red line that moves down the scrub bar in sync with the music, that isn’t indicating clipping.

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