Experts, please help me to fix the below errors: Warning: Data clipped when writing file. > In audiowrite>clipInputData (line 474) In audiowrite (line 245) In ass1 (line 48)

% Define drum sounds
fs = 44100; % Sampling rate
durations = [0.1, 0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.2, 0.3]; % Duration of each sound (in seconds)
openHihat = sin(2*pi*800*(0:(1/fs):durations(1)));
closedHihat = sin(2*pi*1200*(0:(1/fs):durations(2)));
snareDrum = sin(2*pi*400*(0:(1/fs):durations(3))) + 0.5*sin(2*pi*1200*(0:(1/fs):durations(3)));
bassDrum = sin(2*pi*60*(0:(1/fs):durations(4)));
tomToms = sin(2*pi*300*(0:(1/fs):durations(5))) + sin(2*pi*500*(0:(1/fs):durations(5))) + sin(2*pi*700*(0:(1/fs):durations(5)));
cymbals = sin(2*pi*1000*(0:(1/fs):durations(6))) + sin(2*pi*1500*(0:(1/fs):durations(6))) + sin(2*pi*2000*(0:(1/fs):durations(6)));
% Define drum table
drumTable = [
    0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1;
    0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1;
    0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1;
    1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1;
    0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1;
    0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1;
    ];
% Play drum sounds according to drum table
output = zeros(1, size(drumTable, 2)*fs);
for i = 1:size(drumTable, 2)
    for j = 1:size(drumTable, 1)
        if drumTable(j,i) == 1
            switch j
                case 1 % Open hihat
                    sound = openHihat;
                case 2 % Closed hihat
                    sound = closedHihat;
                case 3 % Snare drum
                    sound = snareDrum;
                case 4 % Bass drum
                    sound = bassDrum;
                case 5 % Tom toms
                    sound = tomToms;
                case 6 % Cymbals
                    sound = cymbals;
            end
            startIndex = (i-1)*fs+1;
            endIndex = startIndex+length(sound)-1;
            output(startIndex:endIndex) = output(startIndex:endIndex) + sound;
        end
    end
end
% Save output to wave file
audiowrite('drum_output.wav', output, fs);

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Your 4th column of drumtable has 6 non-zero entries, one for each instrument. So in your 4th stretch you are adding together snippits of 6 different sounds. Each sound is a sine wave, range -1 to +1. Therefore the 4th section of the output will contain entries that potentially range from 6*(-1) to 6*(+1) . (It is even worse than that because some of your sections are themselves the sum of multiple sine waves.)

However, audiowrite() can only handle values between -1 and +1. It is going to truncate anything outside that range.

Question for you: if you have the tom-toms going on a beat, and then you introduce the snare drum, then how loud should the result be? Should you be setting the range of each sound to be 1/6th of maximum value, so that only in the case that all 6 are playing together do you get maximum volume, but the volume of each individual instrument will stay consistent no matter what else is playing? Or when you add snare to tom-toms should the snare and tom-toms each be reduced to half volume so that their sum becomes -1 to +1? More generally, at each point should the loudness of each instrument be reduced according to the number of other instruments playing simultaneously, the mean() of the signals of each of the instruments playing? So any particular instrument keeps changing in volume as you go, depending what else is happening?

[Rizwan]

Bro, can you help me to solve the issue, my mind is not working at all, thanks in advance.

[Walter Roberson]

audiowrite('drum_output.wav', rescale(output, -1, 1), fs);