what is clipping?

[ucbEE]

People talk about clipping a lot. What is it, and what does it sound like?

 

[kramer5150]

When an amplifier reaches its thresh-hold and can no longer produce the full ampliture of the wave form, it will clip the "top and bottom" of the wave.

Guitar tube amps (and preamps) are pushed beyond their limits intrntionally to color the note.

Whats it sound like??? when its done well it can be heaven... Jimi Hendrix "Little Wing", Eddie vanhalen "eruption".

For headphone audio clipping is not a good thing, it sounds muddy and conjested. If pushed severely enough the wave will approach a square shape, and can damage or overheat the headphone voice coil.

Garrett

 

[Nick B]

I thought it was something that caused a penalty in football?

 

[jefemeister]

The output of a device is (basically) limited to the difference between the positive and negative power rails. So if a device has 12 V rails, the maximum and minimum representable values are +12V and -12V. if you attempt to output a signal that is larger than that (anything above 24V peak-to-peak) the extremeties of the signal will be chopped off. You're basically turning a sinewave into a square wave. Not only is this bad because you are distorting your intended signal, but a clipped signal has a ton of high frequency content in it that can cause damage to devices not expecting it, especially speakers with crossovers not designed to filter this crap out. Severe clipping can also present a temporary significant DC offset to the speaker too which is also not so good.

edit: Same answer, different wording I suppose.