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.

I keep the levels around -8 or -6 when tracking and never worry about noise or clipping. Do a search on digital recording levels for lots of info.

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.

Well the reason you don't hear clipping when you play audio created within Sonar is due to floating point precision. Within Sonar either with the 64 bit or 32 bit audio engine going it is extremely hard to cause clipping. Keep in mind that digital clipping is the inability to go above 0 dB. That is no longer the case with FP math. When you record with your audio interface it is not Floating Point but integer math. So when the signals reaches 0dB it cannot go any higher and it is cut off at that point making the wave form resemble a square wave.
 
Also even though Sonar can tolerate clipping not all plugins can.   

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.

wow!! thank you all for such good advice. some of the explanations are a bit too deep, math has never been one of my best things. however, i learned a lot from one question.
again,
thanks so much
jp

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

@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 

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.

I wish they had some different color on the midi tracks, because I cannot help but look at them when they show red.
 
Bob Bone