it simply clips the top

no

and no

1, If you exceed 0dBf (in the digital realm) you clip. When this is converted to a continuous waveform by the DA several things can occur:

- Intersample peaks: even if the waveform doesn't "appear" to clip when a DA converts it back to a continuous signal you can have small overages that occur between the sample 'points' due to the nature of the way the conversion works. You can search these forums and elsewhere to read more, there are oversampling meters to help avoid intersample peaks now, or leave a small amount of headroom

- Distortion on clipping: with material that does a hard clip at 0dBf the DA will actually NOT hard clip as the digital waveform does, but will instead distort (many cheap players will even distort as they approach 0dBf due to lack of ample headroom). Bob Katz & Digital Domain has done some documenting of this, as did TC Electronics in the following whitepaper: http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/le...per_aes109.pdf **note that clipping is not always objectionable, several Q&A's on these forums have mentioned the positive side of clipping samples in an Emu/Akai sampler & inputs on a desk...note that this is being done selectively and during the production process rather than a byproduct of shitty mastering***

- For more information refer to the discussion in the 'loudness war', there's a very well known youtube clip that serves as a good introduction to this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

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am talking +24db here(master channel), not only intersample peaks or waveform distortion and am actually concerned about my audio interface, not the waveform - it didnt happened when recording - it did by accident and it was a short burst when the device loaded(i wasnt clear enough as always),,,

but yeah maybe am too paranoid about my gear...

i thought it could blow a capacitor or something because i dont know where in the chain the conversion occurs...

thanks for the answers
that video is great, i've watched it when i was inspecting Charles Dye's posts thru the internet

It opens a wormhole into an alternative dimension, horrible monsters rush out and dismember everyone. It also wakes up Cthulhu. True story.

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This is a great question, I once had a project where i just threw stems in and accidentally hit play, it played all the tracks at once and almost blew my head off.

Now seriously, if you did this for say a minute, surely something bad will happen? Or no? And why not?

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There are analog components in your converters but you are much more likely to blow them by slamming too much voltage into them at the A/Ds. We actually blew an Apogee AD16X when testing initial designs of our preamp that had WAY too much gain. The people at Apogee jokingly asked us if we plugged an outlet directly into them.

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Digital distortion and probably some analogue DAC chip / op amp distortion. Neither are normally regarded as desirable. The maths in your DAW's output bus no longer represents the audio signal accurately. (in essence it is a form of limiting)

At +24dB above 0dBFS if I read that right... the digital will be a bunch of horrid inharmonic artifacts across the spectrum and the DAC chip / analogue output opamp will just be outputting it's maximum signal. Probably limited by the voltage rails the opamp is running on.
Or possibly, depending on the DAC design (digital max vs analogue headroom in the design) there may be no distortion added to the already massively clipped digital signal by the analogue stage.

To be avoided, lol.

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So just to clarify;

If I have my master bus clipping to the shit for hours (which i don't do of coarse but just for shits lets say), absolutely nothing will fuck up in the box?

Because I put a limiter on my master bus just in case of blow outs, would love to know if it's completely unnecessary.

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It is unnecessary if your concern is your converters but you can shred your speakers pretty easily. That is a MUCH bigger concern.

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