Mixing 16 bit linear PCM streams and avoiding clipping/overflow

Question

I\'ve trying to mix together 2 16bit linear PCM audio streams and I can\'t seem to overcome the noise issues. I think they are coming from overflow when mixing samples together.

Answer 1

Since you are in time domain the frequency info is in the difference between successive samples, when you divide by two you damage that information. That's why adding and clipping works better. Clipping will of course add very high frequency noise which is probably filtered out.