Distortion at high volumes but not clipping in mixer (FL Studio 12)

K

Kaiben

New member
Hey, I'm hoping somebody can help with this.

(this mostly happens with my kicks but other sounds are effected by it too) When making tracks on FL studio, even though nothing is actually clipping on my mixer and it all sounds great at lower volumes, as soon as I turn it up loud it becomes a distorted mess, the kick tends to get EXTREMELY distorted and ruins the song. It's frustrating because it sounds perfectly fine at a reasonable volume.

Is this normal and is it something that I can sort out in the mastering stage later on or is it an eq issue? It is particularly obvious when i reference on my headphones (sennheiser HD 600s) and the track will become unbearable to listen to. But is also obvious, albeit less so on my JBL LSR305s.

Thanks
 
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Most songs will clip at high volumes unless they were mixed at less than 0 decibels [If you use 16bit audio clipping will happen above 0]
So if most mediums still use 16bit audio you will have to mix it to still sound good for 16bit playback as well.

24 and 32 bit have immense and unnecessary headroom that makes 0 db not the clipping point also btw.
The answer is lower the song till it hits below 0 or at the very most, +4db.
 
Thanks for the advice mate, it's much apreciated. It's annoying because I'm listening to some tracks made by a friend of mine (not professional or anything) and his tracks sound smooth as anything cranked to max volume :(
 
32 bits has no clipping problem because of the floating point arithmetics. But 24 bits has the same 0 dB limitation as the 16 bits format.
 
it could be clipping on the channel, there could be some compressor on the kick channel mashing it up, it could be anything... Take a snapshot of the mix faders at the busiest part of the song and maybe we can see something there causing it :)
 
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