Woah, I don't know how to turn off the spectral mode in Saturate, please tell me how to do that.

Nope, I only use Pro-Q4. Mostly because whenever I compare digital clean eqs they null very easily the only thing you have to tweak is the Q factor. if you set the Q to 0.5 in Pro-Q4 it sounds a bit like SSL Consoles just because of the similar Q Factor, I might be off a bit as I didn't compare 0.5 Q with the SSL Emulations but tested it many times with ears it was a similar vibe

But, Pro-Q4 and Crave EQ sounds different, tested these many times. Not better or worse just different. Later read the manual of CraveEQ, It's using a unique phase technology. That's why the difference is there.

Just because Pro-Q4 has more options like DynamicEQ, Also the new spectral EQ & few color eq modes. It's a no brainer.
I don't think I'll ever reach for anything other than Pro-Q4.

 

Yeah, I had a feeling you probably had a similar take on digital EQs, which just confirmed the impression I already had. Anyway, it's always a good idea to read the manual, if you want to disable the 'spectral' processing in Saturate, you just need to move the Detail Preservation fader to 0:

 

Interesting, I will try that one later today. Thanks for the tip! Learned something new today.

 

I believe that comment was referring to AnalogX Genesis plugin loading their Lavry program.

To answer OP, I find both Gold Clip and Ash to be great. I demoed Gold Clip, and liked it, but in my shootout's and blind tests found Ash to be superior. I use K-clip for sound design stuff. I'll also use Elevate fairly often in place of, or alongside Ash. If you have Nebula, some of Tim P's programs have clippers. They are really good. Very interesting to use, either for sound design, or general "transparent" clipping.

 

Awesome! Did you use Ash with regular oversampling or Ash Ultra with AA+ Oversampling??
Or did you skipped the Oversampling entirely for retaining the sample peak level.

 

Don't you find KClip a bit brighter than ASH?
Elevate sounds great on the masters, one of the top 5 limiters for sure.
I have looked for Nebula stuff on the sister site but always get freaked out by the complexity of installing those also I wonder if they are supported with Apple Silicon chips.

 

if you already have r2r-based acustica plugins working, you already have the framework setup correctly. other users have mentioned it working natively on ARM macs. The directory structure of Nebula libraries can seem pretty strange, but that is what it is.

 

p cool. What prompt you have to type generally for a detailed response like this ?

 

I told it to:
compare in-depth, the following clipper plugins: acustica ash ultra, acustica fire the clip, kazrog kclip 3, sir audio standard clip, schwabe gold clip, schwabe orange clip, brainworx bx_clipper, black salt audio clipper, acustica diamond lift master, fuse audio ocelot clipper, newfangled audio saturate, and any other clippers in my plugin inventory you notice. also please convert this text into Forum-Friendly format.

one minute later, it spit out a decent list to review. i'm sure some of it is debatable information, just like it would be from any single human user creating it themselves.

 

I really do not get how people can make a thing out of a clipper. It's just an harmonics generator with odd and even harmonics while the even ones are more natural sounding.

So just create a setting with even harmonics in whatever structure and use it - forever.

 

I use the AA+

Kclip is definitely different than ash, im not sure about brighter, its been a while since i have done a direct comparison between the two, as i use them for different purposes. I'll give them a shootout tomorrow.

Nebula works on silicon. Im on M4 Max, and its working fine except for a minor UI bug. Its confusing at first to set up, but once you do a few setups, you get the hang of it and its simple. The latest programs from Alex B are top notch. SSL Brown and Black are my new go to eq's, his SSL console and dynamics are also used everywhere.

 

I mean If you set all the clippers to Hard Clip Mode and compare it, they null with each other but not the soft clipping because of the curve difference.

In Ash, There is a dial to go between Soft & Hard Clipping. The default is set to Soft, If you push that to Hard, It flattens the modeled analog curve of the converter and becomes a Hard Clipper.
The entire list of Ash Converter model's works mostly in the Soft Mode as that's the only way to have a Curve & A difference. If you go hard mode it's all flat square wave and no actual character like an analog one.

I saw Dale Becker set his Dial in Hard Clip by default. There is a online 3 hour long lecture of him teaching some ladies group how to master and how he masters and approaches things. It was a really good video. It was a video call between them.

Check this one out.

It's interesting how many mastering engineers set a Hard Clip Clipper on the master.

So far, I've Seen Luca Pretolesi with Standard Clip set to Hard Clip & Dave Becker with Fire the clip set to Hard Clip on the master in their templates.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2025 at 5:52 PM

I will definitely try to install the Nebula Stuff. So far I've heard many great things about them despite them being not so known in the plugin business.

 

Interesting point. I don't use clippers that often, most of cases I use them rather drastically to change the sound of drums. No transparency needed. But it's good to read, that Kclip seems to push the highs a bit in comparison to Gold Clip, so I can turn down the GAS factor on latter.

 

@clone ye sure always take those output with a pinch of salt but not bad at all. tnx!

 

Kclip is the one for heavy clipping. With its multiple modes, mid / side and multiband, its a sound design powerhouse.