Music Tracks Clipping in Premiere

[egproductions]

I have some music tracks from unknown source that when brought into premiere are clipping. It sounds...ok I don't really hear the clipping so much but the audio peaks are decently flatlined. My question:

Why are premiere levels turning red (above 0db)? Do audio tracks contain information above 0db? Even if it was clipped, I would expect premiere to show it hitting 0db but not turning red (unless i raised the levels in premiere so that is went about 0db).

I've seen the occasional red clipping warning from stock audio tracks I've purchased...is this normal?

 

[Noiz2]

Two possibilities. Some apps mimic analog metering and are not using 0dBfs so they actually have positive numbers on the scale. In this case it's hard to tell what is going on.
If your scale stops at zero then it is probably calculating the over sampling swing. THe analog signal coming out of a D/A converter can be up to 3dB hotter than "0" in the digital realm. THe reason is that the converter is connecting the dots with a curve so a clipped waveform with two samples both at zero means that the "analog" signal that will be generated will arch between the two and thus go over zero. Smart meter take this into account. Stupid folks who "normalized" to zero didn't.

The last sentance answers your last question...

Modern pop music and folks who grew up listening to MP3's have a tendency to push everything to the edge and then compress the life out of it. Half the time when I get scores they look like a solid square block.