Hello everyone, hope you are all getting ready to enjoy the new year.

This question comes from my constant obsession of creating Drum sounds with synths.

I mostly use Xfer's Serum, or Ableton's Operator, to create my sounds. I usually try to go for a very clean and dynamic drum hit inside the synth but I always like to see what else I can get away with after bouncing out the audio.

Sometimes just for the hell of it, I will throw Fab Filter's PRO-L2 , or another limiter (different limiters give different results) and just push the fuck out of the gain knob. I know this isn't necessarily a good thing to do, since it just destroys the dynamics of the clean sound to begin with, but I like doing weird shit when I make music and I like trying things.

-I've noticed sometimes when I add ridiculous amounts of Gain on PRO-L2 I can achieve some pretty neat "overtones" on kick drums and snares. I say "overtones" because I'm not sure what the limiter is doing when it is being abused at this level... but I find that it can add a certain characteristic to the sound that I can't achieve with say, an EQ or Distortion.
I find that the shorter I make the drum hits, the tighter and "fatter" they start to sound, especially if I reduce the length of the drum hit to only a couple of cycles. it gets even crazier if I add a short reverb before or after the limiter, they all give interesting results. I've read that it might have to do with "digital clipping" which I know little about. Or maybe it's not that... I hope someone can explain what is happening here.

a lot of the time, after adding the limiter and resampling the drum hit, the master will go over 0 to something like +4db. Now I know this might be a no no in terms of basic production princicples, but my god does the kick sound amazing when the master goes over 0!!! It's weird tho, because I've tried this with kicks that I've gotten from sample packs and it just does not work, they sound muddy and fart-like even when I shorten the length. It only works with certain drum sounds.

I'd love to hear what you guys think about this, and maybe guide me in the right direction to some good info about "digital clipping" or "limiting" I just want to be able to grasp the concept. I know Ableton's Glue Compressor has a setting for soft clipping, but I am not too familiar with that term as well..... are they sort of the same thing? Please let me know what you guys think.

-BTW, I would be willing to share some of these drum hits with you guys, as I think they sound pretty awesome

 

Last edited: Dec 29, 2017

Digital clipping is basically just cutting the parts of the waveform that are out of range. Soft clipping is something like an emulation of tubes and limits the signal before it clips.



In your case, it's not that much about clipping but distortion in the first place (as a result of clipping). Distortion is a big topic with many applications. For example, here's a workshop for distortion on drums.

 

Hm, that's very interesting.
I've used multiband Distortion Plugins in the past to get grit out of drums before, but im still confused about the hard clipping..
are there any dedicated distortion units/plugins that do hard clipping ? I know Serum has one in the FX section but I can't really get the sound out of it like I want. Like I said before, I've found that using a limiter (PRO-L2) until it distorts gives me the sound I want but I'm afraid that this might have some weird reactions down the line when I try and maximize the whole mix.

That distortion workshop is super useful, thanks for that !!

I'm new to the site, but I'm sure I can attach files here, I'll upload some of the samples I've created so you guys can check them out for yourselves and analyze them or whatever. If you guys like the samples feel free to use them in your music as well, I'm totally fine with people using my samples in their songs if they wish too, honestly just want feedback

 

You can (sorta) achieve this with a limiter/compressor with infinite ratio, 0 attack, 0 lookahead, 0 release, 0 hysteresis, 0 knee, etc.

You will need something that is or fakes the most basic of limiting.

 

You have to distinguish between unwanted digital (overload) clipping, for instance in the main out, or within 16bit plugs, and any kind of wanted clipping, be it digital, or analog emu, that leads to a distorted sound of your choice. So, as long as you do that on purpose, it's not a problem at all.

 

Last edited: Dec 30, 2017

Digital clipping is what happens when you can't push a signal any higher because you hit the ceiling. What happens after that is that the highest parts (peaks) turn into square waves.

Think about what would happen if you took a room full of Play-Doh (or clay, whatever) people and put them in a room. and the literal ceiling started coming down slowly as one piece. First the tall people would start to get flat skulls, then the next tallest people would start to get flat skulls and the tallest people would start to lose their heads entirely, then the short people would start to get flat skulls, etc.

That's what naturally happens when you overload a digital input on a hardware device except it's the ceiling that stays in place and the "people" get taller when you make the input signal louder. The digital ceiling is a definite, fixed position limit that simply cannot be exceeded without signal damage (flat skulls). The "people" can only be so tall--the signal can only be so loud.

Limiting is the same thing except you can adjust the parameters of where the ceiling is and the behavior when the signal hits that artificial ceiling--and you can do that because it's not a real ceiling, it's all arbitrary. That's how you can have soft digital clipping because it's programmed to give roundness to the peaks where it's limited, but in reality there's no hard (read: real) ceiling.

 

If you record and mix at 32bit you won't have a problem, (generally speaking you can clip channels in 32 bit) And from a sound design point of view anything goes as long as it sounds good no?

 

:D
Reminds me of this Tape Op cover:

 

Wow thats cool info, about the compressor ratios and such. will definitely try those settings out.

 

HAHAHAHA DUDE!! I love this little analogy. FLAT SKULLS! Great explanation.

 

@Tod Slaughter hmmm very interesting... I have heard about the whole "bit" discussion on a video related to Sonar (the DAW).
Apparently the guy explained how some plug ins work in 16bit mode even if your project is at 32bit. I never realized this but you're right, bitrate is very imporant especially when it comes to loudness im guessing.

 

has nothing to do with loudness, but with the highest digital value available.

 

@No Avenger, highest digital value ? can you specifiy ?

 

Let me give you a non mathematical explanation.

16bit plugins are easy to overload, less are 32bit, 32bit floating point and 64bit both mostly DAW, apart from the main/master out.

It's nearly impossible to overload a 32bit floating point mixer channel, but as soon as a 16 bit plugin passes 0dB it will most probably clip.

 

@Olaf, I'm dying from that TapeOp cover man.
That compression bunny..

 

@No Avenger , hmm that makes sense now dude.

Kinda makes me question my mixdowns now since SoundCloud and most Streaming services convert to 16bit .

The questions never end do they hahaha .

 

You're absolutely on the right track OP. Keep doing what you're doing to those drums. Doing this shit and listening, listening, listening is how you eventually discover your own sound. You home in on it like a mail pigeon basically, because after doing it for ages and knowing how everything sounds when you do everything to it, you realize you only like a tiny sliver of the vast space of possibilities, and hate everything not in that sliver with a passion.

Just wanted to encourage you toward bravery, doing more of what you do. You're correct, the limiters all have "a sound" and what's more, it highly depends on the input signal itself too.

I've also got a plugin suggestion for you, check out the fairly new limiter by TDR labs, called Limiter6. It's the evolution of their cult classic Molot compressor (the one with a soviet missile silo front end), and like everything from TDR, the free demo versions are not crippled in any way except that they have no parameter recall "Just like an analog unit", the clever bastards ha-ha.

Reason I'm pimping this limiter to you is not that it's the best limiter that ever limited (it's real good tho), but because it's like limiter/compressor/clipper lego. You get to design your own chain quickly with a clipper, comp, different varieties of limiting and nice modern level meters. You can try out many different kinds of soft clipping to hear what all of them do to your drums. After you're on a first name basis with Limiter6 and understand the manual, every other limiter will be like its little baby bro to you and familiar territory all the way.

http://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-limiter6-ge/

Highly recommend to watch the video with the soothing Dan Worral voice too

 

Last edited: Dec 30, 2017

If you are clipping without a master turn the shit down. Even when mastered the total output should be between -06 & -01 at highest. If you have a master on it, and you're clipping either you didn't mix right or you simply need to turn down the output of your master and add almost any limited you can find at the end of the effects. But NEVER use a limiter until master, you'll never get the mix right.

 

SHHHHHH dont let them know music is nothing but math and science. You may either blow their mind or destroy their concept of what music actually is! lol