[Ardour-Users] Odd clipping

[Ben Bell]

I've got an intermittent problem with the snare mic when recording. Initially
I assumed it was just clipping, but even if I lower the gain on the channel
significantly so that normal snare hits register -20dB in ardour I still often
get the spikes. The odd thing about it is that it isn't in the initial
transient part of the waveform, it's often a little later in.  It's also not
always on the loudest beats, and it tends to come in clusters where things
distort for a while, then they're problem free again.

I've superimposed a "good" snare hit over the clipped one, and you can see
it's slightly odd in that the problem peaks seem to be accentuated:

 http://twitpic.com/ax819i/full

Is this just normal pre-amp or ADC clipping, or have I perhaps got an
electrical problem with my signal chain somewhere (mic->mixer->interface)? 

bjb