two digitallish questions.

[Byron G. Jacquot]

>Clipping is very common on CDs.  I think it is intentional, to make chart
>music sound loudest for radio play.  It shouldn't happen by accident, as
>standards for professional digital audio specify around 10dB of headroom
>between peak audio and digital clipping.

Sadly, there really isn't any standard for levels on commercial CDs.  The
Red Book may have made some recommendations, and people may have left some
headroom, but there's no agreed upon practice.  In the last few years,
there's been a bit of a volume war, to see who can make the "hottest" CDs.
Now we're seeing some casualities, in the way of clipped CDs.

There was an article about monitoring and mastering loudness by Bob Katz
printed in the AES journal last fall, addressing the troubles that a lack of
standards has led to.  He recommended some practices for reasonable levels,
and he also compared an older John Cougar Melloncamp tune to a recent Ricky
Martin one.  The Melloncamp waveform looked like a fuzzy caterpillar, while
Ricky was a pretty solid rectangle...

Byron Jacquot