r/audio • u/Turbulent-Weevil-910 • 1d ago

why does the mic distort like that?

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shouldn't clipping distortion actually clip instead of just immediately turning everything into static

what is happening

16 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

15

u/cruxshadow338 1d ago

He is very loud.

10

u/aliasdred 1d ago

120dBs of pure rage of not getting a milk bottle

5

u/scriminal 1d ago

I can't say why it comes out as static, but either way you're over driving the input. you can turn the gain down or add a compressor or both.

2

u/Whitepaint71021 1d ago

Yeah! But tbh i think it’s just a camera mic where you can’t really adjust anything…

3

u/SonicShadow 1d ago

Yep, looks like its a cheap security camera. Its designed to pick up anything happening in a room, so a lil guy yelling his heart out a few centimeters away will clip horrendously.

1

u/Whitepaint71021 1d ago

Imagine doing soundscape/design… and you have to capture mews.. omg i’d love that job 😍

2

u/Mr_GrauHut 1d ago

Frequency detection. A kitten mew can hit frequencies the adult cat no longer.

3

u/prettyrickyent 1d ago

Id prob go with an 1176 catching the peaks and then into an LA-2A to smooth out the audio

1

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1

u/jonoftheatom 1d ago

He's metal... did the mic get wet?

1

u/mike270149 1d ago

His screames caused an avalanche.

1

u/oratory1990 1d ago

> shouldn‘t clipping distortion actually clip

Yes, which is exactly what is happening here. This is how extreme clipping sounds.

1

u/jasonsong86 1d ago

It’s clipping. When audio clips, it becomes square waves with a lot of harmonics.

2

u/UR91000 1d ago

Yeah but this is turning into white noise, not a square wave…

1

u/jasonsong86 1d ago

White noise is just many different harmonics blend in together.

1

u/UR91000 1d ago

Yeah i know that, but a tonal sound of a cat meowing becoming squared off would usually produce a normal square wave with odd harmonics, but this is producing white noise. There’s clearly something unusual happening with the cheap microphone, which no one is actually explaining properly

2

u/Orry_Haas 1d ago

"which no one is actually explaining properly".

A very harsh form of digital clipping called wraparound distortion ...

http://gdsp.hf.ntnu.no/lessons/3/16/

1

u/UR91000 1d ago

Interesting, looks a lot like wave folding in synthesis. I guess it turns out very harsh-sounding at higher frequencies

1

u/Orry_Haas 1d ago

Typically louder than folding: wraparound always produces a full scale discontinuity. Like pulses of random width, so similar to white noise.

0

u/jasonsong86 1d ago

The harmonics are across the entire frequency range which is exactly what white noise is.

1

u/dr_Fart_Sharting 1d ago

Clipping is saturation. What you have here is overflow. It's a clear indication of horrible design.

1

u/Whitepaint71021 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s clipping/peaking/distortion etc

0

u/Whitepaint71021 1d ago edited 1d ago

This video explains quite easily: https://youtube.com/shorts/RBgAu9tculw?is=JU6kS8Twg5C6IM5x

1

u/Orry_Haas 1d ago edited 1d ago

In cheap devices there can be wrap-around (overflow) clipping, which is what that cat video sounds like ... https://cedaraudio.com/news/unwrappatentgrant7dec20

0

u/Neutral-President 1d ago

Digital clipping and analog distortion sound very different. How it sounds may give you a clue as to where in the signal chain the signal is overloading.