| Question about "clipping" in some music
Lots o' clipping |
If I understand what I have read, clipping can potentially damage a speaker.
While listening to "Love Lockdown" by Kanye West (against my will  ) I noticed that there was a lot of "intentional" distortion in the track, but I was still concerned that it might not be great for my speakers.
Out of curiosity, I loaded the track into Audacity and selected "show clipping" and I got what you see in the attached image.
Will listening to music like this damage speakers?
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Your song still needs a chorus / I know you'll figure it out / The rising of the verses / A change of key will let you out. |
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 drjimPremium,MVM
join:2000-06-13
Long Beach, CA
kudos:3
 ·Verizon FiOS
| Hard to say if intentionally recorded clipping ("overdrive") will damage your system or not. I'd suspect it's OK, otherwise the people who made the music could be liable for daamged stereos.
Clipping can be complex, and more than I can type tonight!
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)
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One man's Magic is another man's Engineering. |
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| reply to gattaca
Welcome to the volume wars, courtesy of FM pop music.
Yes, those peaks are DC current. Bad for speakers.
On the positive side, music mastered this loud is next to unlistenable, so you won't be playing it long enough to do any major damage. |
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 ArthurSWatch Those Blinking LightsPremium
join:2000-10-28
Hamilton, ON | reply to gattaca
If you crank it up, your speakers won't like it, let alone your ears. Amazing what is passed as music these days!  |
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2 edits | 
R.O.C.K in the USA (Album: Scarecrow) | 
R.O.C.K in the USA (Album: The Best That I Could Do) *newer* |
said by ArthurS:If you crank it up, your speakers won't like it, let alone your ears. Amazing what is passed as music these days! I've been going through my music library recently, and I've found that I usually prefer the same song from an earlier-released CD than from more recent "best of" CDs. The newer CDs seem much louder, and become fatiguing to listen to.
I haven't really cared about audio until recently, and the more I read around the more bad news I hear about how "volume wars" value "loud" music over good audio quality. Which is a shame, because I can think of at least a few songs I would like a lot more if they weren't recorded so loudly. It makes them uncomfortable to listen to even when I turn my speakers down.
I'm not sure why they find it necessary to push audio to the point that it clips. For example, ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" seems plenty loud to me, and opening it up in Audacity shows that it doesn't clip at any point. And its much more pleasant to listen to, because the audio sounds "punchy" without being obnoxious and annoying.
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Your song still needs a chorus / I know you'll figure it out / The rising of the verses / A change of key will let you out. |
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ArthurSWatch Those Blinking LightsPremium
join:2000-10-28
Hamilton, ON | reply to gattaca
I agree with you 1000%. Blame the music producers and executives for this mess. |
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| reply to gattaca
If those peaks are in the recorded signal, no, it won't cause any harm to your speakers.
Clipping that causes harm to speakers occurs when an amplifier is over driven, and clips the output wave form. That sort of amplifier generated distortion can annihilate a speaker.
Speakers themselves can clip, in a sense, if the amplifier is too powerful for them and the volume is turned up high enough that the output from the amp is simply more than the speaker can handle. That's when drivers and even crossovers are damaged or destroyed.
Oddly enough, it is underpowered amps that kill more speakers than muscle amps do. They are more easily over driven.
But the recorded signal itself, even if it contains clipped passages, will not damage your speakers. It will sound like crap, though. 
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Ha ha haaaaaaa....ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
- John Lydon, last Sex Pistols show |
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 DataDocMy avatar looks like me, if I was 2D.Premium
join:2000-05-14
Greenville, NC
 ·Suddenlink
| reply to ArthurS
said by ArthurS:I agree with you 1000%. Blame the music producers and executives for this mess. They seem to have forgotten that we know how to use the volume control. |
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