Clipping but sending to a bus

Question

I have a whole load of drum sounds on different channels with 1 channel clipping like crazy. I have bussed all the individual channels into one and then on the same channel pulled the level down a bit (so the all the combined sounds are not clipping).
My question is: When i send audio that is clipping to a buss that is not clipping is this OK or is the sound still being damaged?

Answer 1

When i send audio that is clipping to a buss that is not clipping is this OK or is the sound still being damaged?
Let's get our terminology straight...
When you say "clipping", relating to a bus, or playing back an audio track with plugins on, I assume you actually mean the channel is going into the red bit of the meters. This would be clipping in a fixed point system, but is not clipping in a floating point system. Your audio is not being clipped.
It's just the meters are displayed like that as a guide to help people stay in control of their levels.
So yes, in most (1) cases, it's perfectly fine to have individual mixer channels or busses going over the 16-bit 0dBFS point, even though no one would really recommend the practice
Your audio is not being destroyed. The only place it's *absolutely vital* you don't clip (2) is the output channels - in this case, trying to go over the 0dBFS fixed point will clip your audio, either on the bounced file, or via your audio interface playback.
(1) This is really dependant on whether you have plugins that do not process floating point signals, but used a fixed point I/O for audio. Most do it "correctly" but some stil use fixed point - in these cases, you can clip audio be using levels higher than the 0dBFS fixed point.
(2) I'm not dealing with recording either - of course, if you clip your input preamps, you are clipping on the way in - but this isn't what we are talking about here.