Anyone else noticing clipping with the R2R plugins?

Using SSL2 audio interface into Reaper & VST3

 

Clipping how...?

It's a plugin that adds gain & distortion...
If your signal is loud going in, there's a high chance it will come out the other side even louder (& possibly clip).

Normal behaviour for any plugin that effects gain...

 

check your input gain first ... use proper gain staging

 

I know how to gain stage... nothing on the input or output is even close to get into clipping, still it does.
Have you guys used the R2R plugin release?

 

jamesd:
- Nooooo, you can't add harsh highs to a guitar when I overdrive it ((((
Fortin Nameless:
- haha guitar tone goes bzzzzzzz

 

I own legit copies of some of the plugins, switched them all to superior DRM free R2R versions, never had an issue with clipping on either.
Just tested them all, with my guitar I get signal about -8db (peak) on raw DI recording; -8db (peak) going through Nolly, NTS and Darkglass; -6db (peak) through Abasi, Cali, Omega and Parallax; -5db (peak) on Nameless; -2db (peak) on Cory Wong.

Tested in Ableton LIVE 10 and Studio One 4.5 with default initial settings on all plugins, I'm using Jackson SLAT8 FF with Tosin Abasi pickups going directly through Babyface Pro into PC. Cranking up gain or volume might cause clipping, try using a compressor pedal or plugin on your signal before sending it to Neural or just turn down the master output volume down in the plugin.

Edit:

Oh, so if the signal is not going above 0db, then it might be crackling caused by your CPU. Neural DSP plugins are unreasonably heavy on CPU compared to pretty much all other guitar amp sims, this is both the case with legit and R2R versions. Sadly, besides increasing your buffer size you can't do much here if that's your problem. You might also try using VST2 versions of the plugins, some people reported that it helped but I haven't seen any difference personally.

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2021

Hey, ikagura thanks for the feedback!

Neither increasing buffer or anything else seems to resolve my issue.
I play my fender volume between 2 & 3, so most of the time i need to boost.
No problems in s-gear, helix, Nembrini or THU, thats why i suspected R2R DSP.
Maybe my i7-7700 cpu is getting old.

Anyway good to know it's not a general problem with the release, time to wipe & rebuild step by step.

 

Been testing the R2R Neural DSP releases all day and I think I've got the same problem, it's not clipping but I've got the symptoms of a CPU Overload as soon as I turn on Oversampling on Nameless : horrible glitchy audio, clicks etc...

But it's the only one out of all the R2R Releases that does that, and I never hit 100% RT Cpu when I experience those, performance tab in Reaper shows 3% cpu usage and 50% RT Cpu usage without oversampling (and no glitchy audio at that point) when oversampling is on I hit 75% and the audio becomes all glitchy and horrible (it's not one little click here and here, it's unplayable)

For reference I looked into the performance tab while playing with their other plugins :
-Archetype Plini barely hits 43% RT CPU with oversampling on and delays etc... 35% on a normal crunch
-Omega granophyre default preset with Oversampling on is at arround 35% too
-Fortin NTS hits 66% RT CPU with Oversampling on, now that's a lot closer to what Nameless does, but still not experiencing one click

Reaper 6.13 x64/Windows 10 18363/i9 10900X/Audient id22, buffer size set at 256 samples

Edit : I tried at 512 samples, that lowers Nameless RT CPU Usage to arround 52% with oversampling on, and still clicking/crackling all the time, given that NTS with oversampling hits 66% without the audio becoming glitchy I think it's safe to say it's not a matter of CPU Usage

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2021

This is not a R2R problem, Nameless is well know for having bad performance and dropouts on some CPUs, reducing the oversampling from high to normal will solve the problem on most PCs.

 

I own these SSL legit plugins, they are the same as the R2R Releases..Clipping is not unique to R2R other then what R2R removed as they mentioned in their .nfo Same as the legit SSL plugins.

 

this thread is about a clipping issue in Neural DSP plugins. OP is using an SSL2 hardware interface. nothing to do with the SSL software plugins.

 

No issues here. Double check your gainstaging and make sure that your input levels aren't set too high.

 

Yeah, Neural DSP are all over the place w/ output settings (which can bizarrely be changed by presets!), could be clipping due to that? I mean, for safety sake stick a limiter afterwards?

 

That's interesting. Maybe the only solution is to turn of oversampling while playing, recording or mixing, and turn it back on before rendering?

 

Better make sure you have Microsift Visual C++ 2015-2019 redistributable installed. Basically all real time audio processing needs that nowadays (if it's not installed you usually end up with latency issues). Anyone who says I'm wrong about this is wrong.

 

Im gonna test my SSL2 with a PC next week after I finish testing it with a iPad Pro, if you get pops it usually means your out of memory or a plug in is not consistent with your audio res, I have only one issue with the SSL2 only iMac and it was a softube plugin causing pops and making a song slow down during a session until an error showed up saying that the audio resolution is causing conflict with the audio device, usually this means that the plug in (which was evidently causing this as soon as the effect kicked in) either took too much ram or clearly was running at 44k instead fo 96k

 

Yeah, they really couldn't decide how to go about the level settings in the earlier plug-ins! In Nameless the default level for the mics are at 0dB and the plug-in output is at -7.1dB while in most other plug-ins the mic levels are -12dB and the output gain is at 0dB :S In the Darkglass and Plini plug-ins both default mic levels and output is at 0dB.

 

Is the plug-in output set to -7.1dB and still clipping? If it's actually clipping the output meter, to the right of the output knob, should show two dots at the top of the meter.

 

What about showing a video of your issue so people can get a better understanding of your issue, because to me it sounds like human error and not software

 

For some reason Nameless is also more prone to clicks and pops than the other Neural amps (or other vsts in general). There has to be something different in the code since it's really not more CPU heavy than the others.