Hi all So I assume that when a CD is produced the highest audio that can be encoded at is 0dbm. So I took a CD and used Sonar's Import Audio CD to pull a track in. With the channel's volume and gain at 0 and all prochannel effects bypassed, when played it shows +3.0 on the meter. Also tried Waves PAZ meter and get the same value. How is this possible? Thx for the education Mark  

Not really. you should leave a small amount of room for mathematical errors when converting. -0.06 to -0.03dB PEAK is a good range.
 
Your clippong at +3dB because your going over 0dB. Lower your signal chain. You should never clip and you do not leave faders at 0dB and then add effects and think you not going to clip. 1+1=2 and it will always equal 2/, so if your at 0db and you add effect that raised the volume. your going to clip. The more faders you have, the lower all the fader should be in a song. Read on on proper gain staging to learn more. There are books on this subject.

Cj

Hi CJay, I am sorry, but I am confused by your answer. When the OP says he is importing an Audio CD, isn't that just a straight rip, similar to how windows media player works? I didn't think that you would need to tweak levels (lower the signal chain), or even be given the opportunity to do so, when importing a CD... Not that I have ever used that feature in Sonar, so I am willing to learn here too 

cheers

andy

Think you missed my point. There is no signal chain. I imported from CD to one track, everything set to 0, no effects, no gain added anywhere and it still show +3db Maybe I'm off but I assumed that the max you can encode a CD to 0db and any clip noise would be from recording the previous DA clip but the level it would encode to or what I'd see when I Import it would only go as high as 0db. Maybe I haven't tried but can a converter encode something higher than 0db? If I haven't added gain somewhere then I guess the CD was recorded hitting +3db? Thx Mark

Check your pan laws.

It could also be the music on the CD iself

I would try importing the track into a wave editing program like wave lab where you will probably find out it is fine ( edit to remove wrong information after reading bitflipers post)

IT sounds like funkiness in the rip and pan laws or an interleave stereo problem.  +3 dB is supeciously like the a multiple of gain you can get when doing the above.  If it is + 3 dB for the entire CD you'd have a nice collection of noise when played.

A program made for ripping - like wavelab or Sound Forge would be a better choice to figure what is going on.  Most commercial releases go to -.1 dB.
 
@

what AT said ^^^


Are you taking it to a mono or stereo track?   This is reminiscent of an issue with Superior Drummer where frozen SD tracks magically gain 3 db in the act of freezing. 

In terms of understanding what you're seeing, pan laws are probably the place to start. 

If you have an external CD player with SPDIF out you can capture them real-time and work around this in that way I think. 

<please delete - accidental repost>

I can guarantee you the CD does not exceed 0db. That's a physical impossibility, since it's integer data on the CD. Pan laws should not be a factor in this case, either, as SONAR does not apply pan corrections when importing data.

Perhaps you have the track's interleave set to mono. That would account for a 3db increase.