Keep in mind that what sounds good to younger people is the resulting evolution of rap being played at 600+ watts through blown speakers in bouncing Impalas.

 

I think the comment about the pad sounds has to do with the pads in a song ever reaching the threshold at which they even become effected by your clipper. We are trying to gain only a few dB in most use cases, and it would be very odd to have your pad sounds as loud as the material you really want to clip.

One option I do like when using a Clipper, in that situation; instead of using Automation, I will use Selection Based Processing. Because I very rarely use a Clipper plugin for online processing. By using a very high oversampling rate to minimize distortion, I rarely can run anything at 32X, maybe not even 16 sometimes. But with Selection Based Processing, you can simply use either a Marquee tool, or simply mark regions of your waveform; only selecting the sections to process. And then just print it. This way you can render with the higher OS rate *my computer cannot play back nicely, but will have no problem rendering offline.

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2023

Which I must thank them for. I've been completely 'blown away' by JPEGMAFIA'S SCARING THE HOES album.

The album is one big saturated -5lufs sausage fest and Im in love with it.

 

So my take on clipping would be, don't use clipping on your master in the first place. Use it on individual tracks first. In general, you can clip the transients of your BD and snare quite heavily without loosing anything important. As those peaks most likely will be the loudest parts of your whole song you will gain a few dB of headroom right away without touching the dynamics of your song at all. If that is not enough, you can clip your other drums or other transient heavy material throughout your song. If you end up with a lot of audible distortion, you clipped the sustain of some of your tracks, which is not what clipping is meant to do. In general clipping transients should not be audible because they are very short and the audible distortion that is happening should not be obvious as these transients were mostly clicks in the first place. They should only be less prominent. As a rule of thumb I would argue, that if there is a lot of audible distortion, you did something wrong, and you need to adjust your threshold.

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2023

Definately working track level is a fine approach. But mastering engineers throwing the mix through a Lavry Gold has its magic too. I like AA Ash for that.

 

clipping is cutting off peaks and replacing them with alternate waveform, resulting in (pleasant) distortion without actually clipping the audio signal
limiting is altering dynamics around peaks to prevent clipping,
clipping is mostly useful on hits, drums and other percussive and transient-heavy sounds,
limiting is useful on complex and more sustained sounds like most acoustic instruments, mix/master busses,
but there are no real rules, whatever sounds good is what you should do

 

Personally I have for a long time been very able to use clippers not understanding the usefulness or the interest because I have always generally preferred rather dynamic masters oriented for vinyl rather than for streaming as I work in a niche current of electronic music, techno/tribe in general, like -11lufs to -8lufs and a very good around for this genre. (For a vinyl master destiner)

Spoiler

(a dedicated streaming master is often in my point of view and my perception overcompressed or overcliped to always have an ok level when they are normalized by the streaming platforms this is clearly heard moreover when you rip a sound on soundcloud the difference in volume between listening on the platform with a free account and on your computer is obvious)

Let me slip in a few examples of my perception:

Spoiler: First time i distintcly Hear clipper and harmonic distortion use in a music genre as an fx tricks

Spoiler: Overcompress,Overclipped,Extreme audible harmonic distortion

DR3 the

Spoiler: Compress but not over not really dynamic but ok subtle harmonic distortion

Morta 03 = DR7

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2023

totally agree, that guy its a machine.. i mean... for me a clipper its just that.. but that series of clip to zero... its a whole another level... never though that u can take clipping so far xd

 

The level of your pad was too high, or the threshold of the clipper was too low.

First, there is no philosophy to clippers. Clippers are compressors without attack and release and with infinite ratio. They react to any sample whose value exceeds the threshold and limit it to the threshold. The transfer curve of the clipper corresponds to the knee of a compressor. Because clippers react to every sample that exceeds the threshold, overtones are created when the waveform is modulated.

Clippers are used to create density. You can either compress the sum or individual tracks. When used on individual tracks, you can either use the clipper for dynamic balancing or to create depth. That's it. That's all you need to know about using clippers.

 

Make sure it doesn't hit pads then. Your pads aren't probably as loud as the drums, right? Right? That means, you set the threshold too low in this case, and drums were masking all the nasty distortion you were getting anyways. Otherwise, the pads are too loud and would get in a way of a limiter just the same.
For master clipping, use tools like StandardCLIP by SIR Audio, they visualize the waveform and show you how much you're clipping away. Make sure only drums are clipped away.

Also, something I didn't see mentioned here. Hard clippers act like a non-true peak brickwall limiter and give a lot of distortion, right? Then the softer the clipper (actually the transfer curve, whatevs) is, the more dynamics it keeps intact, so a very soft clipper can be used as a compressor with no attack or release, in expense of some distortion.
For clipping drums in a full mix transparently, you'd want a little soft-ish clipper, like 3 dB knee.

And in general, why clipper and not a compressor/limiter, or vice versa. Well, because of attack and release versus THD and IMD. Sometimes you don't want that, sometimes instead of a glue they give you pumping. Clipper doesn't give any pumping, it gives harmonics instead. So see what you want in any given case.
Clipping the drum peaks before limiting eases it off for the limiter, so it gives you way less pumping, and if you do it right, you'll also make your drums brighter.

As a side note, I posted a couple of tracks recently. Of them, "Waves of the Ocean" was mixed using exclusively clippers instead of compressors and limiters. Here it is, if you're any curious:

Spoiler: and only if you're curious

https://audiosex.pro/threads/some-tunes-inspired-by-eastern-european-sci-fi.73175/

My clipper of choice is apShaper by apulSoft. A fantastic waveshaper that can do so much, and with no compromise on any of its parts.

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2023