Is this clipping?

Food for thought. I recently produced a hard rock album that was master at sterile sounds in NYC. We sat in with the engineer and after about 4 to 5 hours of listening to the same few songs we left. In the mastering studio is sounded awesome, like yes right there drum hits perfect, guitar loud and controlled.

So we get in the car modest stock car stereo sounds terrible.

So I bring it home and put on this one song and on my Primare I normal listen with the volume on 25 or 26, 40 is half. Well the recording was so HOT is blew my right tweeter and just before it blew the sound stage just disappeared. So as much as I want to agree with MAPMAN that there is never anything wrong with the recording this makes me disagree but at the same time under powering a speaker is just as bad, so what it comes down to is process of elimination. I don’t think either one is a 100 true argument.

Oh MAPMAN DEATH MAGNEGTIC Metallica’s latest album play that and report back. Oh and don’t listen to the one from Guitar Hero it’s a different recording, there are bootlegs around of that one.

Ted Jensen doesn’t even what credit for mastering that one LOL

pardon my english corrections "Sterling Sounds NYC" and "want credit"

TGE,

But you say it sounded good with realistic dynamics and loudness in the studio, right?

So the recording would not seem to be the issue. Sounds like your amp clipped and blew the tweeter. Clipping is usually the case when a tweeter blows. Loud, dynamic passages are usually the culprit.

When I used to sell audio years ago, with vinyl as th emain source, many more tweeters were blown by 15 or 20 watt amps tha 80 or 120w/ch ones. Warped records in particular were problematic in that the low frequency noise created used up the power and left the actual music to clipp fairly easily. This is not an issue with digital and I believe fewer tweeters get fried these days in practice due to clipping with digital sources, even though clipping is still a common occurence and affects the sound quality otherwise..

Overdriving a speaker with too many clean watts without clipping can occur also and limit or distort the sound perhaps somewhat, but damage to the speaker is less common than when clipping occurs.

I'll try to check out the Metallica. The Metallica I do have (S&M, Metallica Black album) finally sounds about as good as it can sound these days since moving to the 500w/ch Icepower "monster" amp.

Yes in the studio it sounded great but we took things a step further and found that the levels were peaking according to pro tools. Now why we didn't notice this in the studio could be because when u listen to the same song over and over again ur ears become deaf to attention to detail. They need a break. Now I believe in heart of hearts that in todays world of digital distortion clipping occures ever more often without a listener pushing the limits. Again thats what I believe.

I look forward to you listening to the metallica album. All nightmare long is a killer tune. But seriously be carefull its filled with digital distortion which is what people maybe be getting confused with clipping.

Its true that a lot of modern "loudness wars" CDs feature peaked out/clipped waveforms in the recording. Combine that with amp clipping during playback and things can get really ugly!

I have 13000+ CD tracks on my music server. I often play them randomly like a jukebox. I usually set levels to be loud enough for most recordings. WHen a newer loudness wars track comes on the overall loudness is clearly audible in comparison to other tracks. If my amp were clipping, I would probably not dare do this. As is, there is no audible distortion or breakup with these loud tracks unless in the recording, but yes the relative volume level is apparent. These tracks generally still sound pretty good, but definitely loud and they often succeed in grabbing your attention which is what is intended.