What the check shows.
The check in your browser counts the clipped samples in each stretch it lists and shows when they happen. It grades a stretch Moderate from 20 clipped samples and Severe from 200.
SOLIPSIUM Super resolution audio engine
Clipping
Fix distorted audio: clipped peaks, partly raised back.
Solipsium finds the peaks a recording flattened at the converter's limit and partly raises them back from the undamaged samples around them. Drop a recording to see where it clips and hear its first 20 seconds repaired, free, with no account.
Drop a distorted recording here
Solipsium checks it in your browser for clipping, hum and noise, without uploading it. It can then repair the first 20 seconds for you to hear, with no account.
WAV, MP3, M4A, video and more, up to five minutes.
Your first 20 seconds
After signing up, drop the same file into the editor to repair all of it.
What Solipsium hears
Make a free account to repair the whole recording
Then drop the same file into the editor. Scans and short repairs are free.
What clipping is
Peaks cut flat at the converter's limit.
When a recording is too loud for the converter, every wave that passes the limit is cut flat. You hear it as a harsh edge on the loudest words.
When the repair takes it on.
The repair of the first 20 seconds measures again on Solipsium's server. It labels the recording clipping when at least two samples in every thousand sit on a flattened peak, so a few clipped samples can show in the check and still fall under that line.
How it works
Each flat top is judged on its own.
The repair looks at each flattened peak with the samples around it, raises the ones it can judge and leaves the rest exactly as they were.
Partly raised back.
Flattened peaks are partly raised back from the undamaged samples around them. A smooth curve through those samples suggests the lost peak; the repair uses two fifths of that rise and never lifts a peak more than 2.3 dB over the clip level. Flat tops up to 10 ms long can be raised. A longer one, or one with too little sound around it to judge, is left exactly as it was.
The same level as the original.
Raised peaks can pass full scale, so a repair that would is turned down a little overall and limited around its peaks. The try plays the original at that same gain, so Original and Repaired sit at the same level and differ only by the repair. A repair that changed nothing keeps the original exactly.
What else runs.
Holes and hum are repaired in the same pass: the holes first, then the peaks, then the hum. The crackle and rumble steps are skipped on a recording labelled clipping, since raised peaks look like clicks to one and fill the low band for the other.
Questions
About distorted audio.
Can clipping be undone?
Partly. The wave above the limit was never recorded, so the repair estimates each peak from the samples on both sides and raises it only part of the way.
Why does it still sound harsh?
The repair changes only flat tops at the recording's clip level. Distortion that left no flat tops, from an overdriven microphone or a blown speaker, stays as it is.
Does the repair make it louder?
No. A repair whose peaks would pass full scale is turned down to fit, and the repair never sets a loudness target. To raise a quiet recording, use make audio louder.
Will cleanup run too?
Steady noise under the clipped peaks brings no cleanup on its own: the clipping repair runs alone. Room echo and other voices are not labelled on a recording that clips.
A clipped song?
Solipsium's free try is built for speech. The clipping repair reads the wave alone, so a song's flat tops are found and raised the same way. Noise under held musical tones is the one case that gets Gentle cleanup after the clipping repair.
Clipped from start to end?
A channel clipped through more than three tenths of its length is left alone whole: too little of the wave is left to draw a curve from. When nothing changed, the try plays only the original.
Is my recording uploaded?
Not for the check, which runs in your browser. Pressing Repair the first 20 seconds sends those 20 seconds; when your browser could not open the file, or it runs over five minutes, the file itself goes to Solipsium's server, so the try is offered for it only up to 25 MB. Solipsium keeps only the first 20 seconds and deletes them within an hour. If you are signed in, a file you drop or choose is uploaded to your account and opens in the editor instead. The privacy notice has the rest.
Free audio tools
Related free tools.
Two pages for a recording's level, two for other damage.
- Remove crackle
Crackle that runs through the pauses is found and its ticks are redrawn from the sound around them.
- Make audio louder
Raise a quiet recording up to a peak ceiling, compare it with the original, and save it as MP3 or WAV.
- Loudness checker
Measure loudness in LUFS, true peak and the noise floor, with verdicts for ACX, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- Remove background noise
Check a recording for noise, hum and clipping, then hear its first 20 seconds repaired, free.
- All free audio tools
Every free tool on one page.
The whole recording.
With a free account, the editor runs the same repair on recordings up to 30 minutes long.
Repair the whole recording
Free account, no card.