A little clipping test

I was having a discussion on another thread about audio clipping and the idea that clipping only happens at the interface level and NOT inside of sonar at all.  A couple of people brought up clipping fx in a bin and that to me seems like something I've never been able to do in the box.  Sure, it sounds like it when you play it back and the little red level indicators light up - but it's all an illusion at the end of the day.  
I wanted an easy way to illustrate this, so I thought of a little test I'd share. 
 
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TURN YOUR VOLUME ON YOUR INTERFACE WAY DOWN!! 
 
start with a blank project.  
pull in a short audio file - one of sonar's included loops or something
if it is a loop, unloop it
normalize it to 0db
in the fx bin of the audio track add th-2 producer with an empty preset and turn the output volume all the way up
play back the clip - sounds distorted right??
insert an empty fx chain on the track and turn up the input and output gain on the chain all the way
copy this fx chain 3 times in the bin
play it back - KEEP INTERFACE OR COMPUTER VOLUME LOW! 
sounds just crushed to heck right?
you should be seeing volume of roughly 60db
 
ok - it gets even more fun here!
export the project as a 32bit wav file.  
import the 32bit file into sonar on a new track
the wavform looks totally clipped right?
solo the 32bit file import
play it back - total mayhem
 
drop the volume on the track to -60db  (or whatevery your volume was on the track with effects) and play it back and let me know what you get!
 
Hope some of you have fun with this!!
 

I guess I wasn't clear. Some FX just can't handle a too hot input. That was the point I was trying to make. One would have to test every one of the FX to note which ones are susceptible to being over driven. Some wont have a problem others will. I simply don't see the point in pushing things too much. In a way before Sonar had a floating point audio engine it was a easy to know when to back off. 
 
Also I really hate a loss of dynamics in a music. 

I think over-driving plugins does distort your sound. I definitely work to try to keep from over-driving the PC.

Yeah, but it's not happening in the plugin usually - it's happening in the d/a conversion.  Any distortion I've ever gotten on a track by feeding an effect too hot can always be removed by lowering the volume fader for the track.  
 

Not for me. A lot of FX hard limit as you start to get to the over-driven point. I think You'll notice that if you hard overdrive and then try to restore it you will lose considerable dynamic range.
 
I guess, by this I mean, the distortion will not identically mimic hardware clipping, but that doesn't mean it isn't distortion that you don't want.
 
Frankly, clipping between different interface varies significantly. I have an old Tascam that clips mildly. And m-audio card that clips terribly and a RME UCX that just hard limits at the top. With the RME blind I can't tell when a clip slips by when it happens.

That would be neat dave!  You're a good sport.   You can just chalk most of this up to I'm just kid who geeks out on math still.  One thing I found interesting was when I moved TH2 to the bottom of the chain I wasn't immediately able to get a crushed file that nulled when I pulled it back in.  That one just has me more curiouser!

sharke
The Waves Renaissance compressor, for instance, has a limiter built in to stop the output going over 0dB

So Waves made an assumption about what users wanted to use their plugins for?  

Yes within the daw you can completely disobey good mixing gainstaging and recover at the bus level by dropping the gain. Floating point is forgiving that way.
 
However in general its still best to follow good gainstaging practice since you never know how plugins will react. Some might simply have bugs with their handling of high gain values and some might model circuits that actually distort in an unexpected way when driven too hard. 

swamptooth
That would be neat dave!  You're a good sport.   You can just chalk most of this up to I'm just kid who geeks out on math still.  One thing I found interesting was when I moved TH2 to the bottom of the chain I wasn't immediately able to get a crushed file that nulled when I pulled it back in.  That one just has me more curiouser!

http://forum.cakewalk.com...out-this-m3065697.aspx