SOLVED THANK YOU clipping is a mystery

to me the concept of clipping is a mystery. i have such a hard time getting levels. i'm using superior drummer and it's really hard not to have the meters go into the red and still hear what i'm doing.
i just made a little experiment, i tracked all my drums to a drum bus then sent that to a master bus which goes out to the main stereo bus.
i pushed the volume way up where i can see the waveform "clipping". however, when i played it back i didn't hear that nasty clipping noise.
then i did one more thing, i recorded an audio (guitar) track where the meters maxed out for a couple bars. when i played that back there was no denying that clipping exists.
my question is, when recording a soft synth i.e. superior drummer does it matter if the meters go into the red? where recording audio that hot just does not work.
i would be very interested in what you all have to say about this.

this is normal for recording midi. Audio is a different ball game.
the meter on a MIDI track, that's not a "clipping" display - it's simply an "activity" display.

Clipping audio tracks, whilst not at all desirable from a gain staging point of view, will NOT cause audible clipping UNLESS you are pushing your Main Outs above 0dB.

ahh I see you edited your first post. didn't say anything about audio when I responded.
thought you were referring to midi clipping which isn't clipping at all.
 
just keep in mind, even though you can push these levels to what seems to be clipping,
don't forget about distortion. it will ruin your mixes and your mastering engineer will hate you

joey90405
@chuckebaby, i'm sorry if i appeared rude. i've been so busy trying to figure out why i can't get levels, this was never such a problem with X-2.
like i said, i did an experiment where i did a drum track with superior drummer where i cranked the input and when i played it back it sounded fine, nice and loud. then i did the same thing on a guitar track using my amp modeler right into sonar, again, really hot. now that playback was unusable. i didn't know that clipping with MIDI and audio were not quite the same thing.
i do appreciate all your advice. 
jp 

ahh no need to apologize man, its all good here.
im just glad you got this figured out
peace.

You know Bob, I'd like it if they took the meters off of midi tracks and replaced then with an activity indicator instead. The meters showing O/L is a real nuisance.

No don't take away my meters I pushed for them for a long time and when I got them I was and am happy. 

For me they tell me when a MIDI track is actually sending data. They also give me an idea about what is being sent. The level is velocity and the red telling me an event is occurring. 
 
They are not as useful as the ones in Logic or Cubase but they are far better than what we had before which was nothing.

If you see numbers its an audio meter if not its a MIDI meter. 

tough one for me because like John, I like the way it is now.
but I also share the sentiments that Joey mentioned.
"We're all so "trained" to stay away from the red".
 
That's a good point.
However, When recording Midi, its not really needed to have a correct level and when playing back Midi,
who cares about the level (if its a SIT). unless of course its routed to an output track.

There are two different "types" of clipping.

One is the kind overdriven guitar amplifiers and fuzz boxes do, which can be very musical. That's analogue clipping.

The other kind is digital clipping, which happens when an incoming signal is so hot the convertor chip can't handle the volume. That kind of clipping sounds like harsh noise with no discernable audio content at all. To hear it hook up a microphone or any input source to your audio interface, max out the pre-amp gain and make some musical noise that results in the interface meters going well into the red and record the result.

Some interfaces may have built-in limiters to prevent digital clipping, or pre-amp gain too low to create it. If yours is like that then find a youtube video of lots of broken bottles being thrown into a steel bin and play it as loud as you can stand. That will come fairly close to what digitally clipped audio sounds like.