Clipping is distortion that happens when audio is pushed past the loudest level a recording or file can hold, so the tops of the waveform are cut off flat.
Find every clipped stretch in a song or episode, with its time.
Also used in: Episode Ready Checker, Track Ready Checker
A clipped waveform has lost information that can't be put back, so it sounds harsh, crackly or buzzy, most of all on voices and drums. It usually comes from recording with the input gain too high, from a plug-in pushing past 0 dBFS, or from limiting a master too hard.
A few clipped samples can be inaudible; runs of consecutive samples at full scale usually aren't. Finding clipping before release matters because a distributor or podcast host won't fix it, and streaming encoders tend to make it worse.
A podcast guest leans in and laughs, and the recorder clips for half a second. In the edit it looks like a flat-topped block on the waveform; on headphones it's a crackle.
The host lowers the gain on that clip, or replaces it with the backup recording, before export. On the next interview they set the input so normal speech peaks around -12 dBFS, leaving room for laughter.
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