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I've seen a few such waveforms in my time, but have never been entirely sure what process generates 'em/modifies them.

This is the single mix of Original Love's "Treasure Island." Neither the album mix, nor the acapella version of the single mix have this odd presentation. It doesn't seem to affect the sound, as far as I can tell.

I'm tempted to blame the activity depicted in your avatar.

Seriously, I have no idea. Something funky with the tape alignment, maybe? Though you'd think that would be quite audible.

Ryan

What it looks like is that the waveform has been limited at the bottom of its peak, but not at the top. Buh? I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out where I've seen something similar.

And I'm pretty sure that's tobacco.

I get that sometimes with .wav files made from dodgy sources such as cassette or poorly ripped MP3. And it's always at the bottom, never the top, and it never produces a consistent sound, or lack thereof. In other words, I dunno, but I wouldn't mind finding out.

DC Offset perhaps? That could shift the baseline so that one half gets clipped.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, although it's unclear where in the process this would/could have happened. It's almost as if an offset was applied going in to the compressor, then removed coming out. Because the parts of the waveforms that are not compressed seem correctly centered.

That's strange.

They *are* correctly centered, as correcting the offset does nothing.

It looks like it could have been some component with a push-pull design (where positive and negative halves of the signal are split and amplified independently) malfunctioning during recording/mixing.

I suppose that could cause the output signal to look asymmetrical like the one you posted.

Just a wild guess as I really don't have any background in electronics.

Luke, yes, I know, I was just confirming that you were in fact correct.

I had it with the single 'Shadow' by the Lurkers (and the b-side too). It could be that we are actually seeing the bottom of the groove. And that the vinyl wasn't cut right.