Episode: 3915
Title: HPR3915: Why the hell is my audio clipping?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3915/hpr3915.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 07:52:27

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3915 for Friday the 4th of August 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Why the Hell is My Audio Clipping.
It is hosted by Mr. X and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Mr. X has audio that is clipping.
But will he be able to fix it?
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q.
We are airing it now because we had free slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience.
My name is Mr. X and welcome to this podcast.
As usual, I would like to start by thanking the people at HPR for making this podcast available to us all.
HPR is a community led podcast provided by the community for the community.
That means you can contribute too.
If everybody that listens to this podcast sent in just one show a year, then we would have more shows than we know what to do with.
If I can do it, you can. It is great fun.
For a start, that is my cheap attempt at adding effects.
I haven't got time to add the effects in properly.
This is an emergency show.
HPR is short on shows and so if you could send one in just one a year, we would have plenty.
Anyway, this episode is hastily put together and it is really more for myself rather than for the listeners.
But obviously more than happy to listen to it if you want.
Maybe we will be entertaining, I don't know.
I think I was wondering about a table last two or three episodes of Notist where my audio has been clipping.
Now actually, as I have been recording this, when I was doing some of these noises, for example,
I did notice a bit of clipping but there is no clipping happening at the moment.
I am using Audacity and as I usually do and the last two or three shows are Notist Work Clipping.
I normally add an intro track for a few seconds and that was clipping.
The point was that when I listened back to the, I normally listened back to preview at an MP3 format
and it sounded fine. I went back and listened to the Flak files which I sent to
HPR. I mentioned that was the day when I was running a chat and we mean they were both having a chat.
And there was no distortion or clipping that I could hear.
What I normally do is I record my audio and then I will add some audio compression to the
speech part of the audio and then leave it at that. What I am planning to do is I am going to read
a little bit out from the HPR site and then add a little bit of attenuation each time
and see how much I need to ensure that there is no clipping.
I have just opened a browser and that is just the windows just disappeared.
I told you this was a hastily put together so if I google for a hacker
pub look video, a hacker public video, all right, that is the HPR site and then I am going to go
to give shows because that is what they are looking for, give shows and so I wonder what you
should wish but I will decide to read. Now there is a section, stuff you need to know,
that is one, two, sector topic, three, record your show, four up with your show, questions,
still nervous, our motto is important. Our motto is any audio is better than no audio so
don't try to be a perfectionist, just send something then. Any topic of interest to hackers,
what is just to be anything really, it ain't a show unless it's on the server so no point
chronic procrastinating and I do plenty of that as I am doing right now. If you tell us you are
doing a show then you owe a show. You don't need anyone's permission to upload a show but if you
have any questions then drop into the hash augcast, augcast planet channel on free node and chat
with a live person 24 or 7. So I mean I normally just go to the straight from this page,
give us a show, I normally go to the, where is it now, blah blah blah, we will look for the
calendar page, that's number four, upload your show, giving shows, what's in there.
Why, here we go, upload your show, the HBR schedule is entire community driven and we recommend
that you decide when your show will be released. There are only three days to wait until next free
slot. Please consider recording a show. Yeah, so if, okay, review that, review that,
update your stuff, you need to know page, right? I might be, but I'm not up to date with what the
latest things are, stuff you need to know. I was thinking of picking a paragraph which is no,
I'm not sure which is the one to read because this isn't really good, it's solving my problem with the
audio clipping, headlines anyway, just for my friend's interest, it's rough you need to know,
you will no longer be allowed to edit HBR pages from Wikipedia.
Any policy decisions are made by HBR community, HBR will stop as a project if there are not enough shows
important, pay attention, support our patrons, we do not syndicate non-HBR shows,
you're agreeing to license your show CC by SA, your permission to redistribute your show
and its entirety, the audio fee show will not be modulated, your show will be signaled as
containing explicit content if it does, you determine when your show will be released,
all reservations need to be approved, we use UTF-8 and to end, keep accessibility in mind,
your show will be heard by an international audience, I'm a big thing about date quads and all that,
yeah, year then month in date, feed the reserve queue, the reserve queue is intended only to be used
in the cases where there is still a gap in the schedule, 24 hours a part to release,
this was known as emergency queue, but now can also be used when the hosts don't care
when the shows are scheduled, they will be used on a first come, first go basis,
when there is no conflict with the schedule guidelines, yeah, I think person,
you know, these guidelines are, remember, I always forget, I try to think, oh I am, I've done more
of one show, so I better not do it, two in the same week sort of thing, I leave a gap, I think it's
actually two weeks, I don't even remember that it's two or three weeks, how many weeks is supposed
to leave a gap for me personally, if you could put it into the reserve show and it deals with
automatically then that's great, I don't really care when the shows go out,
the schedule guidelines, you must have your audio recorded, ready to upload before you pick a slot,
always try and fill in free slots that are available in the upcoming two weeks, if the queue is
filling up then please consider leaving your slots free for new contributors, if you have a
non urgent show then find an event empty week and schedule it then, if you're uploading a series
of shows because it's a scheduling one every two weeks, interviews will be released sooner,
so there you go, recording a podcast on this page you will find information on how to record a
podcast, our golden rule is any audio is better than no audio, so keep that in mind,
you can record a portable media player, record with a bedding on your computer, and so on and so
forth, yeah, blah, blah, blah, export the flak is set to level to 8, set bit depth to 24,
yeah, recording interviews with a phone, recording round table discussions, avoid
bedding background music, we mix down to mono, no need to admitted it to the file,
there's a big chunk of it, picking a slot for your show, as I say from my point of view it's
just keep it simple, I'm happy for them, for HP added to choose the slot, and they're only
guidelines, you know, I'm just gonna give you a snotty letter for picking, they're not quite
following the guidelines, I'm sure I've not done that in all occasions, so yeah, I think that,
how much audio is that I've recorded so far, let's see, a little bit 10 minutes, that's more than
enough, I'll probably put tones in between each section, so that I know how much attenuation,
I need to add in before distortion, before the distortion is gone, see how that goes,
yeah, I don't know, I don't know if FHPR's changed their audio leveling, scripting or whatever,
it's behind the scenes, but I'm definitely hearing clipping, that I didn't hear in the original show,
see that that was something we had to do with the newer version of that, I'm determined to get
to the bottom of it anyway, anyway that, I think that's enough for all those, that's a clipping there,
maybe I do need to turn my mic levels down, but actually, you know, that's funny, I'm just noticing
the mic levels look quite, is that adjustable, I don't know if that is, it's picked to the top,
but I don't know if I'm using a version, an older version of Ubuntu, and I don't know if
if the recording levels actually work on this while, and I normally use the mixer that comes with
Ubuntu, so I'll just turn this down a bit and see if it makes any difference, oh no, it's, it's
not adjustable, so I need to go into the settings to do that, I'm talking to myself here,
maybe I do need to reduce the, the level is a little bit on my mic here, but what I can't,
as someone said, I didn't hear it when I was playing it back, so who knows whether it's me,
HPR, combination of both, I don't know, but hopefully this will get to the bottom of it, so if
anyone's got any questions about any of this, I'll bother to listen to it, feel free to drop my line,
I can be contacted at myserex at hprgooglemail.com, as mrx80hpr theat symbol googlemail.com, hope
none of you have fallen asleep during this, oh actually some of you do want to fall asleep while you're
listening to this, don't you, I forgot about that, that's the new policy, anyway hope you're all
doing well and catch up with you later, just for now then, bye!
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