Hearing clipping with specific IR's/Presets only; Seeing jagged sine wave in align tab

[cheap]

I've been playing around with some of the STL Tones preset packs (David Bendeth and Kris Crummett 2.0) and have found something strange with the IR's and tons of clipping when playing hard at all and especially with the neck pickup.

I've attached a screenshot of what I'm seeing with every single cab in both of these packs. I've never seen a jagged IR like any of these and these are the first IR's that I've gotten so much clipping with (the bad kind). I sent an email over to STL asking, but wanted to ask the FractalTrust too to see if there's something weird with the IR's.

Swapped in my usual York Audio IR's and the clipping went away almost entirely, but it's definitely still there. I can typically use any of my guitars with any other preset and not have any clipping at all--only with these amp/cab combos. Using the preset leveller I can drop the level down to -40db and still hear the clipping character so I don't think it's anything caused by the output level

This one is tricky since it's a paid preset I can't exactly share it so hopefully the screenshot and a soundcloud link will do.. I have no idea what could be causing the issue and I'm pulling all my hair out trying to track it down! I really hope I'm just dumb and there's something easy causing the clipping that I'm missing because I'm too close to it

 

[York Audio]

I think it might be the amp model you’re using. I remember having a similar experience with an amp model a while back hearing a sort of “background clipping/distorting” sound. I think Cliff said it had to do with the amp’s cathode follower or something. Switching amps (I THINK to the AC20) made it go away. Maybe try that and see if it solves it for you. If it goes away, you may just need to find another amp model for lighter clean/edge of breakup tones.

 

[cheap]

@York Audio Thanks for the suggestion! I tried out a bunch of alternatives, but ended up missing the baked in oomph for the profiled sound. I loaded another amp block and copied all of the settings until I found what added that crunch and I feel so, so dumb! The saturation switch was turned on and set to 2--turning that off kept all of the oomph, but removed the clipping distortion sounds. Turning it back on and pulling it down to just a little over 1 added some really cool harmonic stuff, but nothing like the ugly clipping when pushed closer to 2

 

[FractalAudio]

Sat switch will definitely do that as it's a hard clipper. Not the kind of thing you use for edge-of-breakup, it's designed for aggressive, chainsaw distortion tones.