castleofargh
Sound Science Forum Moderator
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no you don't get it. I suck at explaining things so I'm half to blame here, maybe somebody else will know to give a clear explanation.Which is exactly what I said earlier. Someone in the chain must violate Nyquist, or mis-use their gear, to cause this phenomenon.
No. That would violate Nyquist theory. Any high-level sample sub-Nyquist will be reconstructed properly. If it's not, there can only be two reasons, (1) MSB clip (embedded in the PCM), or (2) a DAC that's not meeting it's own specification.
If a mastering engineer pushes program to just below 0dBFS, then a properly specified DAC will reconstruct that master properly. If the mastering engineer purposely clips the program, then a properly specified DAC will clip the master in the same manner. If something other happens, then, yes, the DAC is at fault.
a DAC will have, let's say 2V for 0dB, 1V for -6dB and so on. in general it wont be able to go above 2V because there is no bit value above 0dB. if 2 samples are set close to zero dB while mixing, but they happen to be on each side of the sine peak of a high frequency, then the analog signal would require above 2V to properly reconstruct that sine peak while still providing close to 2V at the sample point. boom intersample clipping.
in the digital realm, the sine isn't clipped because no sample was clipped. but because the master didn't care to keep some headroom, we could end up with some of the analog signal clipped at 2V.
does that make sense?