Why Do Old Clipping Labels Remain After I Lower My Product-Ad Voiceover?

Understand Why Clipping Labels Remain

Find Clipping identifies potentially clipped regions and creates labels marking their positions. These labels represent the audio conditions detected when the analysis ran.

They do not automatically update after volume adjustments, new recordings, or imported audio changes. A label remaining after an edit therefore does not prove that the current waveform still meets the clipping criteria.

Lower peaks alone do not establish that the recording is acceptable. Keep the source recording and compare the actual speech; analysis labels and listening approval answer different questions.

The behavior described here comes from the Audacity Development Manual dated September 2, 2026, rather than testing across stable releases.

Check Where New Analysis Labels Go

Find Clipping uses a label track named Clipping. The name is case-sensitive. When that label track already exists, subsequent analyses append labels to the topmost matching label track.

An audio track named Clipping does not serve as the destination for these analysis labels.

This matters when an advertisement project contains findings from several editing stages. New labels may appear alongside older labels, making it difficult to distinguish their origins.

To inspect only the current analysis, separate it from the existing label track. The following procedure follows the cited Development Manual; preserve the earlier findings before removing them from a working copy.

1. Save a project copy that retains the historical clipping labels.
2. In the working copy, close the old Clipping label track using the X at the left of that label track. If several label tracks named Clipping contain old results, remove those historical destinations from this copy before continuing.
3. Select the audio to inspect and run Analyze > Find Clipping again.
4. Inspect the new Clipping label track and record the audio selection, thresholds and analysis stage. These are current analysis findings; they do not establish that earlier recording distortion has been repaired.

The Audacity Find Clipping manual explains label-track reuse and closing the old label track before viewing only current findings.

Interpret Start and Stop Thresholds

The Start Threshold specifies the number of contiguous clipped samples required to begin identifying a clipping region. Its documented default is three.

The Stop Threshold specifies the number of contiguous unclipped samples required to end that region. Its default is also three.

Consequently, a labeled region can contain unclipped samples. A finding described as nine clipped samples out of eleven means that nine of those eleven samples were classified as clipped, not that every sample was clipped.

Stereo channels are analyzed separately and can receive separate clipping labels. Do not interpret two channel-specific findings automatically as two independent recording events.

Illustrative Exercise: Compare Two Editing States

Illustrative exercise — fictional inputs, not executed Audacity analyses or listening tests. Input A has historical labels from before a volume reduction; Input B is a stereo recording with potentially different findings in each channel.

For A, use the clean-analysis procedure above and record which results belong to the new run. For B, record the channel and clipped-sample count for each finding. Compare the original speech separately; lower amplitude alone does not establish recovery from distortion.

Illustrative Exercise — Historical Labels Versus Current Clipping Analysis

These are illustrative exercise rows. Save a copy and record your own observations; the example is not an executed acceptance test.

Download review worksheet (CSV)