Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
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Becoming deaf -> clipping. The solution is a headphone amp?
Hello guys, maybe is why I'm becoming deaf because I play loud guitars, maybe is why I play very loud guitars with walls of delay and reverb but my vu meter is ever red and every time I play with the fear of clipping...
Do you think that the solution can be buying a cheap headphone amp? In this way I can turn down the volume inside the ipad and boosting my headphones! Will it work?
Thank you!
Comments
A headphone amp will allow you to use your iPad at a lower volume (by allowing more volume in your headphone) and may prevent distortion from the output of the iPad to the input of your next component, but won't necessarily prevent clipping in other parts of your signal chain. A compressor with limiter (Brick wall mode) on your master out is more than likely what you are needing....but I don't fully understand your signal chain and over-all objective. It seems to me that a headphone amp won't help with your hearing either......unless you are playing guitars loud so that you can record a hot enough signal.....Could you give us more details?
I use guitars with lot of reverb and delays, actually I have JamUp volume setted to -10 db but if i play chords with distortion and wall of delays the signal starts to clipping. If I use loopy and a drum machine clipping is everywhere. Actually my chain is : JamUp or wow into bias, than Effectrix into turnado, sometimes into AUFX dub n space, everything into loopy hd. I use only one delay bad one reverb per time. Synths are more docile, but if I have many loops they start to clipping, especially at lower frequencies: bass lines, power chords, kick drum.
So my idea is keeping the internal audio very low (about -20 or -15 db) and boosting the headphones ( or monitors) with an amp without loosing sound quality. Is it possible? Ps: if I play leads with hi-gain guitars (and a lot of delay) it doesn't clip but if I play chords or low strings it stars to clip.
I believe what you are doing is possible, but if you are recording, you will want to have the hottest signal possible without clipping. To do that, you will either have to reduce volume to where it doesn't clip, or insert a brickwall limiter into the chain just before where the clipping occurs.
The only thing that will help your ears, however, is reduced volume.
Does that make sense?
I've noticed that a lot of iOS music apps have very high output volume and I have likened it to the "loudness wars" of cd mastering. Combining only a few apps results in clipping, which isn't how it is in the world of real music equipment. Most instruments and mics require a good preamp to get them to output decent levels and even those with line level output aren't as loud as possible. I've made my apps output a decent level so they can be recorded with headroom and play nice with others but many users complain that they are too quiet. We have more headroom than you think, and if you're recording at 24 bit then it's a non issue. Peaks at around -10 are normal. Boosting the output to the speakers/headphones is pretty much how it's done in a pro studio environment. The rest of the headroom isn't destroyed until the mastering stage when most records are ruined.
Ok think you. My only problem is that if I reduce volume again I can't ear clean guitar and dirt guitars became muddy and mid-scooped!
Do you know some headphone amps that are cheap and hum free?
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=115&cp_id=11504&cs_id=1150404&p_id=615220&seq=1&format=2
Haven't used that one, just a cheap option, I've been pleased with this companies quality overall. ymmv
Another idea is to check your headphones load impedance. Not sure which ones your using but you may need a lower ohms rating.
http://www.head-fi.org/a/headphone-impedance
@Audiojunkie said:
No, you do not want the maximum volume before clipping when recording, even if you're still using tape. That's an old myth, having to do with getting the volume of the music being recorded above the volume of the noise coming from tape. With digital, you shouldn't have much. As someone else mentioned, that's especially true at 24 bit, but still true at 16. The bits only equate to the amount of range you have available between the loudest sound and the softest sound you can record, and with 24 it's already wider than humans can perceive. A limiter does exactly what it says, which is to reduce that range so it is perceived as louder because the highs and lows are not as extreme so you get a higher average level without clipping. If you do that at the end of your signal chain, by choice, nothing wrong with that. But stay out of the red, no need to be there. Also, make sure you know what the meter is telling you- if 0 on the meter is "digital 0 (0dbfs) " you do not want to be in the red. If it's "analog 0 (0dbvu)" then you have headroom but you want to leave the headroom there, which allows quick volume spikes to be clean. If it's digital 0 on your meter, aim much lower, like -18dbfs, and you'll have a nice clean signal that you can then amplify.
Check out your entire signal chain and make sure nothing is clipping. If you have to turn an input gain down, then look at the thing in the signal chain before it and turn that output down, once you clip an input any levels after that are just quieter versions of the clipped signal. In other words, you want to make sure each piece in the signal chain is sending a signal to the next at the right volume, without distorting (unless you're using it as an effect, but in the digital world that distortion is not the same as doing it in the analog world.
If you're saying that you just can't hear the iPad period, then yes you need an amp. Or find more efficient headphones.
But if you're losing your hearing, take care of that and don't keep blasting yourself with noise, you can never regain hearing you've lost. I use custom ear plugs or molded in ear monitors (with the volume pretty low) on every gig I do because I do not want to be deaf ever. Over 20 years gigging and my hearing is still in good shape, playing with many bands who were loud.
I agree completely with what @mrufino1 said above! @mrufino1 explains it much better than I did! :-)
...and yes, my comment about getting the volume as high as possible without clipping was to minimize floor noise when compressing/normalizing later. :-)