Yooo, I am a FL Studio user and I recently discovered how soft clippers can make things sound really nice and dynamic, I produce trap and a friend who already produce for a long time showed me how applying soft-clipper in master can make everything sound more dynamics even if its clipping in the mix, and I really LOVED how trap kicks sound when clipping over +3db in the mix with an soft clipper in the master, it really sounds powerfull and banging... But I didn't get how it works, I mean, I tried to reproduce the effect that soft-clipper does to my kicks with every way I could think of but when I apply a limiter it sounds distorted/squashy, soft clipping just make kicks clipping sound amazing! How does it works? Like, what's exactly happenning with the audio that's going to the soft clipper and there's other ways to reproduce this effect? Also, I've been using Fruity Soft Clipper, the standard from image-line for doing this, is there any soft-clipper "better"? Or one that can sound even greater? Thank you for the attention

 

You have one soft clipper for me is the one to go D16 Frontier and it's free if you registered on site with auth off line if you want....

 

Imagine you're an audio signal and you're having a peak moment, volume is shooting way up.

When a limiter sees this, it reacts by automatically turning you down for a split second, so that the peaking moment you were having is preserved as much as possible (just turned down). This is meant to preserve audio fidelity as much as possible, and all kinds of fancy tricks are used to avoid distortion.

When a soft clipper sees your peak, it basically says "slow right down, cowboyyy", and what it does is let your peak get smashed against the cieling (max value audio can have), but as your peak gets closer and closer to max, the soft clipper slows down the peak's velocity more and more. So instead of smashing into disto, and then buzzing and crackling, you kinda end up slowly rounding out as you near the top. Your peak still gets distorted bad, and the soft clipper doesn't care. It's a kind of distortion, which is just a little bit more on the soft side compared to hard digital clipping that everybody recognizes as "ok, that's overloading".

The thing is, although limiters preserve fidelity best, fidelity isn't always what sounds good, and you can get cool effects out of distorting your signal especially if it's only for short bursts like kicks.

For a great clipper, check KazRog KClip.

 

You made me laugh, understand and still recommended me a clipper, thank you

 

You can use Limiter 6 by Vladgsound in clipper mode. Serp Clip by Vladgsound very good.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2020

Personally, I liked the clipper from Kazrog only the first version ..

 

Usually clipping is for clipping transients. Clipping causes harmonic/THD/IMD distortions, aliasing (use oversampling), noise... But... Clipping some clicks (attacks of snare or kicks etc) adds all this stuff to them, so aliasing for noise is noise itself, aliasing and distortions for short clicks are clicks itselves, so you will not get too much bad stuff for such stuff. So, clipping is dynamically transparent and loud for such stuff (hard clipping is louder though, but soft clipping also creates another kind of distortions, but smoother in some ways).
So, use clipping (hard/soft/in-between) for transient, attacky stuff, don't use for tonal (bass, pads, leads, vocals). Or use slightly, but carefully. Add limiting after that (subtle or moderate), ceiling output, intersample/true peak, oversampling...
SRC before limiting recommended (if SRC after limiting, you should do it carefully, use meters, waveforms editors to see all peaks and true peaks, analytics, oscilloscopes). After limiter use dithering/noise shaping (tpdf is classic) for lossless formats (flac, wav, cd...). Editing, fade ins, fade outs... Then, 16 bit dithering for 16 bit audio, such as cd, for example. 24 bit dithering for 24 bit hi-res audio. After dithering no more audio processing. Output level is lower than 0dB (-1dB or quieter for posterior undithered lossy mp3, aac stuff), for dithered wav, flac and other lossless usually -0.3dB is maximum, but sometimes it is safe to go -0.5dB or -0.7dB. True peaks should not touch 0dB and higher.

Some small quick recommendations, notes. Better to listen material and experiment.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2020

mpm always like a boss

 

nice? thats a matter of opinion. dynamic? most definitely not. they do the complete opposite, in fact.

it basically rounds off the top and bottom edges of the waveform, which 'squashes' the total amplitude (hense why it becomes less dynamic).
it will add harmonics but will give you more headroom. the reason you are hearing it as better is probably because of the extra available gain. our brains have a weird way of hearing louder as better. for proper A/B comparison use a gain utility to match the percieved levels of the A and B before comparing them.

if you actually like the sound then fine, enjoy it, but try to like it for yourself, rather than because its what everybody else is doing.

the difference between a soft clipper and a limiter is pretty much just the attack and release settings. a clipper is instant, so doesnt really lower the percieved volume as much as a limiter, which will try to preserve some of the dynamics using the envelope.
a soft clipper could be compared to a compressor with a soft knee, and a harder clipper is like a compressor with a harder knee.

 

During my mixes I found that the way people mixes they kicks is too soft, you know? like if its an hard trap the kick is freaking overlimited with a annoying distortion, it gives the sound some personalitty but most of time it just sounds too squary for me, I really don't like that kind of sounding, when I say it sound dynamic is in relation with other sounds in the mix, the kick sounds really loud and it stills keep the transient sound, as the snares/hats/percs, exactly what I was looking for with my kicks for years

 

Like, I dont even do anything with fl soft clipper, I just put an soft clipper in the master and then get my kick going over +2db and thats it, sounds really dynamic without having to apply a bunch of fx in the channel

 

Can you give me a tour in how to make compressors sounds like fl soft clipper? like, whats the difference between soft clipping, hard clipping, and in between? where I can set this difference?

 

I'd like to add a more physical perspective to the discussion taking the underlying principles of sound synthesis into account. The way the "corners" of a waveform at the top of the amplitude are shaped define the resulting harmonic series of overtones this produces on the output aka the speakers.

If the peaks of a waveform are clipped hard at the upper limit of the dynamic range, their edges resemble more of a square-like waveform which results in a harmonic series with the most overtones of any of the basic waveforms you know from sound synthesis, including all odd and even harmonics. This results in a lot of additional high frequency content aka noise or distortion being added to the signal. The additional frequency content can sound like more brightness or destroy the signal depending on the duration of the clipped state of a waveform. This is determined by the threshold of the clipper - the lower the threshold is the longer the amplitude of the signal remains in a clipped state (hello Loudness war).

A softclipper also squeezes the top of the amplitude of a signal but without creating the sharp edges of a square wave, but rather those of a slightly distorted sine wave which still has rounded corners which creates a different harmonic series with less harmonic overtones that mask the signal. This usually results in the signals sounding less aggressive and more pleasant.

To see exactly what it does, get a oscillator, set it to a sine waveform with a fixed frequency, run it, throw a clipper on it, throw an oscilloscope plugin followed by a frequency analyzer at the end of the chain and watch how changing from soft clip to hard clip changes the resulting waveform and the harmonic content/frequency spectrum of it.

There are a lot of plugins that have softclipping included. Izotope Neutron 3 Elements (which you can get for free until May 3rd) has soft saturation included in the EQ which is a more subtle approach to clipping because you can apply it to a specific frequency range and not just the amplitude of the signal as a whole. You can also use the included Exciter module to softclip the signal. JST Finality Advanced has a very nice soft clipper, too. Kazrog Kclip is highly praised by metal guys - and metal guys know good distortion ;).

A good practice to enhance a signal by clipping it is to add it in via a parallel path or by using a plugin which has a mix knob, so you keep the integrity of the original signal and add spicy overtones on top of the original/dry signal - whether hard or soft clipped. If you use a reverb in your production you could also saturate its return instead of the direct signal. The Arturia EMT 140 plate has a nice drive built in, which can add a nice color to the mix in combination with the included EQ.

 

Last edited: May 1, 2020

Here is a list of clipper plugins you can demo, and see what you like:

1. Boz Digital Labs - Little Clipper
2. Boz Digital Labs - Big Clipper
3. Voxengo - OVC-128 (no aliasing, 128X oversampling)
4. DMG Audio - Limitless
5. Kazrog - Kclip
6. Stillwell Audio - Event Horizon
7. T-RackS Clipper
8. SIR Audio Tools - StandardCLIP
9. Newfangled Audio - Saturate

I'm sure there are more out there, but these ones i have tested. Some of them don't have oversampling and they will introduce aliasing, but they have there own sound and you can use them creatively. And you can test them yourself, all you need is :

1. Tone generator
2. Oscilloscope meter (to see the shape off the clipping)
3. Frequency analyzer (to see the harmonics and aliasing)

Example:
1Khz sine wave - unclipped


Little clipper - 1Khz sine wave - hard clipped


Little clipper - 1Khz sine wave - 50% soft clipped


Aliasing, interpolation, oversampling tutorials:

 

Last edited: May 1, 2020

FL's Soft Clipper is a stripped version of "Fruity Waveshaper". It has a few Softclip presets which you can modify and play around with. Make sure to check "HQ" in the bottom right corner.

 

im confused. are you saying you want to make your kicks bigger without squashing them too hard with a clipper?
if so:
a lot of the power in a good kick comes from higher frequencies than you might think. a powerful kick will need a "click" type sound along with it, either layered or recorded like that or whatever.
you wont lose too much dynamics pushing a little bit through a saturator, but the more you push it the more transient data you will lose, which will take away that punch and dynamics.

often its also useful to shape your kick with a compressor after you have ran it through the soft clipper, maybe that is what you are missing?

not really even 100% sure i understand the question

 

I mean... Imagine you take any HQ kick and clip it over +1/2db
after that put a limiter in the master and do nothing more
The kick will sound "squashy"
Now imagine the same situation, but with a soft clipper, the kick still sounding like it was before, with the transient shape almost the same, it gets a little bit saturated too as you said,but for me its nice because it gives the kick that bit of high frequency information that maybe it was missing to sound more punchy... That's what I mean, like, if you take an snare you can easily shape it to sound as you want just by compressing and limiting it (and maybe some eq, but most times compressing and limiting solve this) , but by some reason if I do this same process with a kick it still sound weaky compared to the rest of the track, maybe that's because the low frequencies are less percectible or sounds "quieter", when I told this to a friend who has been producing hard trap for long time he showed me the soft clipping and it just solved 99% of this problem, but he coldnt explain me how soft clipping is doing that

 

okay i see.
the reason is because a hard clipper stops the signal instantly as soon as it hits the threshold. this creates a hard edge, like a square wave. the result is a lot of overtones and less dynamic range, which is probably what you are describing as "squashy".
a soft clipper rounds off the edges of the signal instead of a hard edge. the result is more dynamic range and less overtones compared to a hard clipper. the amount of difference depends on the curve of the clipper.

by using a soft clipper you are keeping more of the dynamic range, which in turn will keep more of the transient data of a drum hit, keeping it more punchy than if you were to use a hard clipper, while still adding some overtones for character. its basically like a happy medium between hard clipping and no clipping at all.

side tip:
the results of a clipper (both hard and soft) depend hugely on the input signal. if you are having trouble getting a sound where you need it to be it is likely the input signal that is the problem. sometimes simply using a different sample is all we need to do. this often gets neglected and people waste hours trying to get a sound where they want it when they could have spent 5 mins finding another sample or 15 mins programming a new sound.

 

BUMP