Is it possible to unclip a clipped recording?

[xmakeafistx 10+ year member]

Forgive me if this is a rather old question, but can you?

I recently found out the wonders Audacity can do, and I realized so many songs are terribly clipped.

Thanks all.

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[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

From what I understand about source material, if it's crap and mixed too "hot" there's nothing you can do to "uncrap" it so it doesn't clip. This is an annoying trend in the recording industry that's been going on for a long time.

 

[xmakeafistx 10+ year member]

Man, that *****. Yeah audacity has had me paranoid about everything lol.

 

[THATpurpleKUSH 5,000+ posts]

Man, that *****. Yeah audacity has had me paranoid about everything lol.

word, same here, there's a ton of clipped files out there and you don't even realize it until you put it in audacity or a similar program

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

I use gold wave to review files.

The short answer is yes, yes it is possible. But it is not worth the effort

You could simply cut and paste a non-clipped portion of the song with the exact same waveform. But it would need to be done at zero crossings, and it needs to be the same length at the zero crossing.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

The closer the clipping is to the source of the music, the harder it is too fix. Clipping at the amp is easy. Clipping at the h/u is manageable. The source clipping itself, get a new source.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

we're talking about clipping in the actual recording. it's not uncommon nowadays with "equal loudness" music mixing, or the loss of dynamics.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

we're talking about clipping in the actual recording. it's not uncommon nowadays with "equal loudness" music mixing, or the loss of dynamics.

This is where you lose me. When someone talks about 'unclipping' a signal, Im thinking balanced interconnects or servo-drive speakers. You are talking about modifying the original material. Ive never used gold wave, Im assuming it requires a portion of the reference material, with no distortion, and extrapolates that to the entire track...?

 

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

Short answer, no.

There is no way to "undistort" the source material if it's recorded under an overdriven situation in the first place. There are plenty of youtube videos where the original recording volume is too high so it distorts, there is no way to fix that.

Thankfully if you can find a distorted music track chances are there are better recordings of the same song that isn't distorted somewhere on the internet. There are some drum n bass tracks where they intentionally overdrive their bassline to give that distorted bass sound but that's kind of different because their goal is to get a distorted bass beats.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

if you ask a recording engineer who does mastering - he'll say yes, you can remove the clipped portion and replace with the appropriate waveform. it's time consuming, but of course it is possible. essentially, you are applying compression to the signal.

hell, gimme a clipped .wav file and i'll replace the clipped portion with an unclipped waveform. i bet there is mastering software out there that can do just this automatically... and i may have access to such software. i'll ask my recording engineer buddy.

goldwave lets you view and edit the waveform. so you open a .wav or .mp3 file and you can see each sample. then you can just copy/paste/filter selections. the trick is rounding the waveform as if it was ran through a compressor/limiter.

goldwave is how i added a 47Hz tone to the Nyan Cat Man song. Next i'll make that tone pulsate so it can be used at some competitions.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

goldwave lets you view and edit the waveform. so you open a .wav or .mp3 file and you can see each sample. then you can just copy/paste/filter selections. the trick is rounding the waveform as if it was ran through a compressor/limiter.

So technically you are manually changing the original recording by altering the amplitude of the wave...? This would, if Im understanding you correctly, change the dynamics of the original recording because you've simply shortened the waveform of the clipped portions, while leaving the unclipped waves intact. Correct?

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

yes, not only shortened the amplitude of the waveform at the clipped portions, but recreated it to maintain the same frequency. time consuming, but possible.

the dynamics would usually remain the same - since you're not increasing the volume of the quiet parts and you're just limiting the amplitude of the loud peaks to be just below clipping.

 

[Kangaroux 5,000+ posts]

The problem with clipped recordings is it's hard for something like an audio program to detect whats music and what's distortion (i.e. source music and the harmonic distortion created from the clipped signal..)

For a bass line it's relatively easy, as it's just a matter of applying a high pass filter then recreating it that way. Anything other than that is most likely just a waste of your time. IMO removing a clipped signal is like taking a 128kbps mp3 and trying to make it 320kbps