Clipping during recording

Bug reports
1

I am getting some clicking noise during playback. is it possible I’m recording too loud and the track is clipping?

2

There’s a “limiter” in place that should prevent clipping. More likely you’re running into an issue that others have reported, mostly on Safari, where there are glitches in the recorded MP3. It’s difficult to figure out what’s going on since I’m doing very little on my end – mostly just telling the browser to record. The glitches are probably in the browser code although I still need to make 100% sure there’s nothing I can do about it.

In the meantime, try using another browser, especially if you’ve been using Safari, which has a ton of audio-related issues to begin with…

3

Thanks Luke,

I’m actually using chrome but will give another one a go.

4

Luke, Your DAW’s playback engine buffer size may be needed to be increased to 1024 or 2048 in order to bounce/render a mix for “record” if you’re not doing in real time. Low buffer sizes introduce clips during the bouncing offline process.

doug

5

@DougKnecht Unfortunately, that’s not it… I’ve tried different buffer sizes, and it currently defaults to 16k. This is a Safari-specific issue. (Safari seems to be having more and more audio-related issues these days. Pretty soon I’m afraid I am going to have to advise all Safari users to use another web browser or the forthcoming desktop app to access Strum Machine.)

6

@LukeAbbott I guess we may be talking about two different types of buffer settings. In Pro Tools, the buffer for playback is in samples, and it only goes up to 2048, probably dependent on RAM. It offers 2048, 1024, 512, 256 and 128 samples. The lower settings offer less latency, while the higher settings offer less clicks and more stability.
BTW, I use Microsoft Edge in Windows, and still getting clicks.
doug

7

@DougKnecht Yeah, that’s what I thought you were referring to. Strum Machine uses a similar buffer for recording internally. I think it defaults to 512. I bumped it way up to 16k in an effort to reduce clicks, but to no avail.

I’m working on a desktop app for Windows/Mac/Linux which I’m hoping will offer more reliable recording-to-MP3 without clicks. I haven’t finished work on the app (I’ve barely tested it) but it does seem to be working well on my computer at least. You’re welcome to give it a try with this download link…

Eventually I am going to do a complete rewrite of the recording code with more modern Web Audio APIs and I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll also see some improvements when that happens.