You might have to apply actual fades to the edges of the clip before the waveform shows it. Automation might not work in that scenario. 

gerberbaby


jon you are funny guy you arent really offering anything other than self righteousness. total BS you are just playing devils advocate.  i'm sure you use visual cues of some sort whether it be db metering, phase analysis, graphical EQ, freq spectrum' track markers, a freaking computer monitor ! etc. Anyway for everyone else, it would also be cool to be able to have a separate gain control on a cumulative bus waveform...so you could tweek summed tracks without bouncing down. 

Real nice way to get my attention with and insult. Because you seem unable to understand what I am saying I will ignore you for now. 

I am not talking about fade in or fade out waveforms here but back to clip gain. While the waveform drawing is not ultra accurate it is certainly good enough if you are lucky enough to have a DAW that displays changes in clip gain.

After doing a vocal or solo comp etc you enlarge the track height so it is quite visible and is reasonably large. Any inaccuracies due to waveform drawing are not an issue now.

The trick is to not get too concerned about the height of the transient at the start of a waveform but rather the average height of the body of the waveform. Once you get these to a similar height by eye, as I said in an earlier post the VU meters perfectly over these changes and the volume is nice and even according to the ears too. Sometimes when you match the body of the waveform the change in clip gain can sound unnatural. Your ears will tell you pretty fast if that is the case. It is easy to reset it back to 0dB as well in Studio One. A one click operation.

Yes it works and it is a great feature. Once you have it you will wonder how you ever did without it. It is fast and very effective. You can come up with all the reasons as to why you don't need it or why it may not work but the truth is it does work well, it's fast  and it is a great feature. Most DAW's do it so it can't be bad.

The weird thing is that if Cakewalk implements this in a future version of Sonar the sceptics here will all be singing its praises. 

This brings up a question I've wondered for a while now. The proccess gain feature in Sonar. I use this by highlighting a section (Lets say the section is a little lower then the rest of the take in a track) go to process\gain and increse usually by 3 db, if that's to much, I undo and select something lower. I will also highlight an complete track if it's been recorded to hot (Not a track that is cliping, the damage is already done) and decrese. It gives me the desired result and I don't hear anything bad after I do this but I wonder if I'm doing some sort of damage that could show up somewhere down the line to that track.
Anybody know?

MarioD

californiamusic


Hmm I have "Display Clip Fade Attenuation" selected and my wave does not respond visually when drawing a volume envelope.  What am I missing here??!  ; )

Same here.  Stickman393 would you please enlighten us?

It only works for when you grab an end of the clip and apply a fade in or fade out to the clip - normal envelope automation isn't respected. 
I apologize if I mislead anyone on this.

Jeff Evans


Hi Johnny. The command Process>Apply Effect>Gain is destructive. ie It is like Audio Suite in Pro Tools. Any changes here are permanent. You only have one level of undo and that is immediately afterwards. Once you save the session I don't think you can go back in Sonar and undo these commands.
...
 
Hi Jeff, yup if I go overboard with it I undo before anything else. This works really good but, like you said, it's destructive. I watch all these videos where these guys are using clip gain (Most of them useing PT) and look forward to a time us Sonar users will be able to also. It's no deal breaker for me at all and I can get around it by using the Process>Apply Effect>Gain or splitting the clips, putting them on seperate tracks and rising or lowering the clip gain.
Thanks for replying

Jeff Evans


I am not talking about fade in or fade out waveforms here but back to clip gain. While the waveform drawing is not ultra accurate it is certainly good enough if you are lucky enough to have a DAW that displays changes in clip gain.

After doing a vocal or solo comp etc you enlarge the track height so it is quite visible and is reasonably large. Any inaccuracies due to waveform drawing are not an issue now.

The trick is to not get too concerned about the height of the transient at the start of a waveform but rather the average height of the body of the waveform. Once you get these to a similar height by eye, as I said in an earlier post the VU meters perfectly over these changes and the volume is nice and even according to the ears too. Sometimes when you match the body of the waveform the change in clip gain can sound unnatural. Your ears will tell you pretty fast if that is the case. It is easy to reset it back to 0dB as well in Studio One. A one click operation.

Yes it works and it is a great feature. Once you have it you will wonder how you ever did without it. It is fast and very effective. You can come up with all the reasons as to why you don't need it or why it may not work but the truth is it does work well, it's fast  and it is a great feature. Most DAW's do it so it can't be bad.

The weird thing is that if Cakewalk implements this in a future version of Sonar the sceptics here will all be singing its praises. 

It can certainly give your compressors a lot less work to do, which in itself is a bonus

I do a step even before any clip gain changes. And that is to clone the track and bring it into Adobe Audition and even up things by eye there too and check metering over certain areas. For a vocal track I often aim for nice even VU response where all the vocal phrases just peak up to 0dB VU. You can do all this without tampering with the vocal dynamics as well.

Then after that I get it into the arrangement and it is usually very close there. But some minor cuts and clip gain changes can be just the ticket for fixing up a few areas here and there. By eye as well. Now you have got a nice even vocal track without any compressors running over them. 

I often place a limiter first just catching very high out of context peaks and taming them back a little. I send this now to the vocal buss and put its compression on there. Now that compressor can be a much lower ratio and it is working nice and evenly all the time with little actual gain reduction. This compressor just tightens and evens things out a little more. The low ratio ensures a big sound. It has a relaxed job now and sounds better for it too. And it does not have to dive on loud bits here and there either.

You now have a fantastic vocal sound, even, loud and powerful. You can afford to turn it down now. Minimum voltage max illusion that sort of thing.

Extra Tip: Reason why it is good to put your main vocal compressor on the vocal buss rather than the vocal track. You can manually ride vocals on mixdown at track level. Sometimes there is no better sound than this. It requires you to learn the song vocally. You are then pushing into the vocal compressor because it is later in the chain ie after the fader. It will be getting a more even signal if you manually ride it.

Also you can send the vocal reverb from the track which is before the main vocal compressor. This sends a more dynamic vocal signal to the VOX reverb. The VOX reverb gets louder on the louder parts of the vocal line will quieten down on the softer bits. This sounds very nice and cool in certain situations. The vocal reverb ends up with its own life and dynamic. All automatically and this saves you doing it later with automation. It sounds more natural too. You are hearing natural reverb decays rather than your automation false decays.

when Sonar does implement the (clip gain)feature the user base is going to wonder "where has this feature been my whole DAW life" it is crazy useful. and i think Jeff had tried to explain how you just duplicate a track, and just edit the duplicate, where it is totally non-destructive. clip gain allows alot of dynamic control without compression, tedious mouse node and automation writes. which is a super time saver and workflow plus. the just click and drag and visual aspects in real time is pretty accurate, you can even things out fast. it gives a db numeric value during the edit. com'on man total dynamic control that you can see and hear, and you can correct on 1 or 2 playbacks is simple in concept to a pro, but a revolution to a fanboy home user like me.. Mix as you go lives!!

the user base has spoken.. Sonar needs visual Clip Gain.

Those sound like cool methods. I'll have to give these a try. Thanks Jeff!

Hi all,this method is described in the Bob Kat's books like "microdynamics" that is the first solution for dynamic problems.Best

They both do exactly the same thing.

its not the samething!!  the OP may have saw a different and more effecient way of doing things. and is curious as to why?.. like i said the feature is so simple in concept, i could be wrong..but the OP wants to edit from the waveform on playback in realtime..and wants to see and hear the adjustments in realtime.. without having to go back and re-adjust.

just to add some insult to injury,
 I remember the days I didn't look or focus on the waveforms, I used my ears.
I still do that now, sometimes when I get frustrated with a mix I shut off waveforms and go back to basics.
when I re engage the waveforms to view in analysis modes I often see things I normally may have done different and it makes me realize how effective / deterrent visuals have become.

Up at the top under your "View" menu is where you select Console view, track view, etc.

the ability to manipulate the waveform on the db scale is controlling the dynamics. there are many steps in volume envelopes in Sonar. its not a 1 click on the fly process. the waveform in Sonar is permanent on the db scale even after automation and volume envelopes, which is inaccurate visually.

 
50/50
 
First 50 - Ctrl+Drag on the upper portion of a clip will give you a clip gain envelope on your cursor, so it is a one click/step process.  If you want to modify after the fact it's Shift+Click.  Still one click.
 
Second 50 - No, the waveform display does not visually change to reflect the clip gain envelope you just modified.
 
After reading all the posts in this thread I would like this feature too.  I think it sounds like a good idea.   I don't consider it essential though; i.e., I can edit and mix just fine without it.  It's more of a convenience thing IMO.   Then again, who am I to turn down a convenience feature.