hydrogen wrote:All i'm saying is that when you render a track to wave it has nothing to do with the d/a converters. The clipping will be in the file. There is no a/d conversion in the data... its still digital data and has nothing to do with your audio interface.
And for sure... Bob Katz's book. In particular he mentions that the metering in most software isn't accurate. Which makes it even more important to stay away from the reds.
One last thing, are you guys also implying that when playing back an audio file on a computer that is mastered to say -.3db, that it will clip or cause distortion in the a/d converters?
completely missing the point. mixing at -12 does not make ableton give you a clearer mix. the point is that your master fader tells the DA how much energy to produce, the -12 thing is only relevant in that sense as your converter doesnt like to be run up tp its max. This has no bearing on rendering a file though. -.3 is fine for a file, thats why itunes has a volume control. you will get the same "mud" running your volume hot out of itunes because once again your converter is being stressed out.
within ableton however (chains, individual channels) you can go into the red without worrying about anything as long as the gain is brought back down before the physical output. thats the whole idea behind floating point as my reference to the bob katz book which had nothing to do with metering like you mentioned
it doesnt matter at all what company made the vst but if it runs internally with floating point (like 99% of vst in 2010) its doesnt matter