I have a track bounced, and at 2.45 theres an abrupt peak(quite severe)
Ive opened the project a few times first I thought it was too much abrupt send but got rid of that, I dont know whats causing it I think its the attack of a fast chord stab but dosnt happen anywhere else, and ive compressor on this already. if I sent to mastering would this peak be an issue, cause I dont think I can get rid of it now
Ill attach image
I've embedded the image for you. It appears the host doesn't like live links — HR
This video by the ever helpful Mike Stranks demonstrates how to insert an image once you have uploaded it to a third party image hosting site such as Imgr.
I can't see anything obviously excessive, but perhaps the cursor is hiding it.
I do see a curiously asymmetrical waveform though, with consistently stronger negative peaks than positive ones... It could just be a display issue, but it also be a compressor/limiter artefact.
I'm not a fan of excessive limiting, but a good look-ahead limiter plugin should be able to tame your wayward transients if necessary.
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...
That screen shot doesn't really help us as there's no scale reference or metering showing any peak levels, so we don't know whether you are touching 0dBFS, or are a long way from it.
If the peak is anywhere near 0dBFS, then the whole thing is too hot, especially if it still needs to be mastered.
You always have the option of manually editing any stray peaks down a bit (select the region and simply reduce the gain), it's a lot more reliable than relying on a compressor or limiter to do it and it means you can set a compressor or limiter to better settings for the whole track.
But it needs to be done in context of the track, and if that's a loud part of the track, then reducing the peak will reduce the track dynamics. Worry less about the picture and more about the sound. Yes, check the amplitude isn't getting too big, and check on LUFS levels, but otherwise mix with your ears.
thats the normalized version so that pear at 2mins 45 sec is normalized on bounce to 0db or what ever ableton normalizes to
in the bounce I call -8db peak as a rough name looking at ableton master peak meter(usually they bounce less) that excessive peak is nowhere near 0db
theres no compressor or limiter on the master channel, it seems to be the attack of the chord but dosnt happen anywhere else and looking at the compressor it reduces the chord quite a bit when it comes in each time.
Ill post the track altogether its the 2 mins 45 sec the image is spiking but Im gonna give up now til monday as wrecked
If it’s a single stray peak higher than everything else (I can’t see it on the waveform) and you can’t fix it at source then limiting is the solution I would try. If you use a good limiter with (as Hugh says) some look-ahead the effect should be inaudible.
Sometimes peaks on tracks will just randomly coalesce into a very strong sum on mixdown. Maybe everything comes together in phase for a short time... who knows? But it happens regularly to me. As long as it's not clipping, it doesn't matter, and you could easily edit peaks as pointed out by Wonks:
Wonks wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 5:55 pm
You always have the option of manually editing any stray peaks down a bit (select the region and simply reduce the gain), it's a lot more reliable than relying on a compressor or limiter to do it and it means you can set a compressor or limiter to better settings for the whole track.
. At any rate, it shouldn't matter at all to a mastering engineer of any competence.
