Mixing issue - clipping I think....

GazLion · March 2014

I recorded this song on my day off last Friday. I didn't spend a lot of time perfecting the takes or anything as this is simply just meant to be a demo version, but here's the issue....

When I play it in Reaper and through my studio monitors the mix sounds fine, but I've just listened now through my laptop speakers via soundcloud and it sounds slightly distorted to me like its clipping. I've checked the levels in Reaper and at no point does it clip any of the tracks or the master output there, and the overall level of the song isn't very high.

Please ignore the bass guitar parts, I am no bass player and my bass is beyond shite lol.

Anyways, if anyone has chance please have a listen and tell me why this is clipping. Do I just need to mix the whole thing at a lower volume? If you hadn't already guessed I'm an amateur at this.

spark240 · March 2014

Ok...so I listened on the cans and its fine, also through my Vaio desktop, also fine.

Maybe its your laptop playing up?

I did notice the overall level seems a little low, and there is a weird high sound going on with the acoustic guitar, did you use a mic or direct?

Maybe try and little compression on the whole mix?

octatonic · March 2014

If you post an AIFF file I can take a look at your mix level.

Cacofonix · March 2014

No problems on my cans. There's some distortion on the electric guitar, but no clipping that I can tell.

Try playing from reaper on the laptop and up the volume to see if it's the speakers distorting.

GazLion · March 2014

OK thanks guys I'll do some more testing later but its probably just my dodgy laptop speakers.

@spark240 I recorded the acoustic take both mic'd and direct with the mic'd track slightly higher in the mix. I've not EQ'd anything in this mix so I could prob filter out some bad frequencies.

Thanks for the feedback guys

spark240 · March 2014

GazLion said:

OK thanks guys I'll do some more testing later but its probably just my dodgy laptop speakers.

@spark240 I recorded the acoustic take both mic'd and direct with the mic'd track slightly higher in the mix. I've not EQ'd anything in this mix so I could prob filter out some bad frequencies.

Thanks for the feedback guys

I try to separate the mic'd and direct signals left/right, then delay the right track about 20ms, to add some width.

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Mixing issue - clipping I think....

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