Wave amplitude change in DAW

[Hozy31]

I don't know if this topic has arisen before but I couldn't find any useful information anywhere. So when using some of my pedals and recording in my DAW (Ableton Live) i noticed that the amplitude of the recording signal is reduced somewhat. Friends have noticed the same thing in Nuendo. Is it an impedence thing or a gain thing. It doesn't seem to effect the outcome of the recording but I am very curious why it is.
Anyone know?

Thanks in advance

Hoz

[cylens]

yes: distortion, clipping, compression, any combination of those can make a waveform "smaller" ie the peaks are lower but the overall sound as loud or louder as an unaffected sound/waveform

[motterpaul]

Are you saying the waveform looks like it has less peaks - more compressed? In other words - there is not less amplitude, there is less variation or change in amplitude.

The reason is guitars with gain (overdrive) have the top parts of the sine wave "squared off" - this is called "clipping" and is the definition of what overdrive pedals do - they push the circuitry to a point where the waveform surpsses the amplitude bandwidth of the original signal giving you a compressed waveform.

It may not sound "compressed" in the traditional sense, but any recording engineer with guitar experience knows that lead guitars (whether recorded thru amps or gain pedals) are in fact compressed waveforms by nature.

Note - this has nothing to do with the volume at which you record it, it has to do with what gain pedals do versus what a clean guitar looks like (in waveform). You can record it at the same, lower or higher volume, but the actual waveform will generally look like you have just compressed the snot out of it.

That is one reason it is all but useless to apply a compressor to a guitar effects chain after a thick overdrive, all that you usually get is feedback or noise.