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About the level meters

In the track mixer, each track has a stereo pair of level meters, located above the track’s volume slider. Each level meter consists of a series of colored segments, moving from green through yellow and orange to red. The higher the volume, the more segments in the level meter light up, from left to right.

The red segment at the far right of a level meter only lights when the volume reaches the highest possible level. The dot to the right of each level meter lights red when the volume overloads the track, causing distortion, or “clipping.” These dots are called “clipping indicators.”

The clipping indicators stay lit to remind you to find the place where clipping occurs. Once you find where clipping occurs and make changes to prevent it, you can reset the clipping indicators by clicking them. Clicking either clipping indicator in a track resets both clipping indicators for the track.

Level meters

There is also a pair of master level meters that show the volume level of the overall project. The master level meters are at the lower right of the GarageBand window, above the master volume slider. Before you export a project, you should make sure the master level meters do not show any clipping.

For information about how to prevent clipping, see Related Topics. To learn more about clipping, decibels, and distortion, see the Glossary.

Related Topics

Preventing clipping

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