After calibrating the virtual mixer in the way described above, the stereo sum will not clip at the master fader, You can add several more instruments and notes without driving into clipping. It seems, that a headroom of 12 dB is an ideal value for working with orchestral music scores.
The obvious reason that all orchestra tracks playing simultaneously does not clip the stereo master is, that you calibrated with the loudest tutti. The not so obvious reason is, that -12 dB headroom is an ideal value. It would need a lot more notes playing velocity of 127 in order to drive the stereo master into 0 dBFS+ clipping. Another reason is the rudiculous level uniformity of VSL thru out the whole library, this uniformity prevents from being surprised by an unexpected higher level.
When adding more and more instruments and/or notes, then at a certain point the headroom is used up, and the audio will clip. That is the moment we have to set a larger headroom. The clipping will occour at the stereo master, and you simply give more headroom by pulling all track faders back by a small amount. Often a reduction of 0.1 dB on all faders to -6.1 dB is enough, and the stereo master fader will not clip again thru the whole composition.
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The obvious reason that all orchestra tracks playing simultaneously does not clip the stereo master is, that you calibrated with the loudest tutti. The not so obvious reason is, that -12 dB headroom is an ideal value. It would need a lot more notes playing velocity of 127 in order to drive the stereo master into 0 dBFS+ clipping. Another reason is the rudiculous level uniformity of VSL thru out the whole library, this uniformity prevents from being surprised by an unexpected higher level.
When adding more and more instruments and/or notes, then at a certain point the headroom is used up, and the audio will clip. That is the moment we have to set a larger headroom. The clipping will occour at the stereo master, and you simply give more headroom by pulling all track faders back by a small amount. Often a reduction of 0.1 dB on all faders to -6.1 dB is enough, and the stereo master fader will not clip again thru the whole composition.
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