Clipped audio signal repair

Patent Granted It is preferable to avoid clipping, but if a recording has clipped, and cannot be re-recorded, repair is an option. The goal of repair is to make up a plausible replacement for the clipped part of the signal. Complex hard-clipped signals (recorded at CD resolution or less) cannot be restored to their original state because the information contained in the peaks that are clipped is completely eliminated. Soft-clipped signals can be restored to their original state to within a case-dependent tolerance because no part of the original signal is completely eliminated. In this case, the degree of information loss is proportional to the degree of compression caused by the clipping. Lightly clipped bandwidth-limited signals that are highly oversampled have a high likelihood of perfect repair.