When I am increasing the gain of my drum samples, sometimes the level meter in the lower right hand side of the FX chain panel might be going into the red, yet my ears cannot percieve any clipping, with samples playing back at the desired volume. The main level meter will not be going into the red.
Should I keep the FX panel level meter out of the red and increase the volume of the whole track in the mixer instead?
I don’t think you’ll hear any clipping if the main level meter isn’t clipping. Internally, everything is 32-bit (or 64-bit) floating point. There’s some discussion about that here:https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/37360/how-come-floating-point-audio-doesnt-clip
The common practice is to leave headroom in the mix and boost things up when mastering, but if you’re doing the opposite it shouldn’t be a problem (AFAIK) unless you’re using some plugins that don’t like it when the levels are that high.
Thanks, interesting link about 32bit floating point…I’ll make sure that level meter doeesn’t go into the red from now on to leave headroom for mastering.