Why does panning a track lead to clipping for the track, but not for its chanel in the master-out?

[Nadlern]

I have a mono track panned 100% to the left chanel. The track then clips (see red indicator). Why doesn't the left master out chanel clip?

(I have reset the indicators on both track & output chanels to confirm...)

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

Simple - because it's a 32-bit Floating Point mixing system, and while signals are in that state, you can't cause an overload anywhere - well not until you get up to about +1500dB (not a typo). Put simply, all the signals are scaled, and it's the scaling system that allows for the excessive latitude. You can't really extend this to the real world, so these signals have to be converted back to integer to work in your sound device whenever you monitor or listen to them. What this means during processing though is that 0dB becomes somewhat arbitrary. You can test this for yourself. Create a mix, and shove the master faders right up so you get a solid overload, and the resulting file looks (and sounds) like a block of green. Now without doing anything else, in waveform view normalize that mixdown to 0dB. It will sound and look fine.

So 0dB and the concept of clipping and overload only applies to integer signals - not the processing going on inside Audition.