Ups, you're right - and it's not even downloadable over there - but somewhere else...

 

I think it's not about the 'quality' but rather about the features (knee, algo, symmetry, L/R, M/S, number of bands, OS), sound (harmonics), performance and handling. And here they can differ a lot.
For instance:
Apogee Soft Limit: only soft knee, only even harmonics (unique feature, AFAIK)
bx_clipper: L/R, M/S, two different knee characteristics (alters the harmonic content slightly), no real hard knee, needs 4x the CPU of StandardClip!
StandardClip: precise, performant, different algos (alters the harmonic content)
Voxengo OVC-128: fixed 128x OS!

 

I agree with everything you wrote

Standard Clip + Apogee soft clip is an amazing combo. I was surprised by the "free price", and I am surprised by 99 cost now, it is very very good for me. Obv it's a very specific sound, so you can apply it on certain mixes, not on everything. Standard Clip instead is perfect on every kind of music, its hard clip sound is the most transparent, and the soft clip is also very unique

I often put Apogee Soft clip and Standard Clip hard clip only in this order.

PS: sometimes the golden old Clipper from T-Racks suite gives very good results, and it is free from time to time

 

StandardClip is among my least favorite soft clippers due to its abhorrent "makeup gain" functionality (actually it's input gain) tied with the knee. By softening the knee the input gain increases because...reasons? With old bus compressors the makeup gain increases based on the threshold but this makes 0 sense in a mastering clipper, not that it didn't have issues with it then either! If it is an "industry standard", in my opinion, it's because people are fooled by "louder = better"

 

because distortion increases the volume, as easy as that my friend

"softening the knee" in a soft clipper it's just distortion, and if there's no gain compensation the distortion increases the overall volume

you have to keep the output at unity gain by ears, with the output slider, and thats the best option, I dont like auto gain compensation, that is something that fools the perception

Compensate the output by ear and then A/B for comparision

 

What are you talking about? Everything you said is so easily proven wrong, it feels like you're intentionally spreading misinformation or just trolling. The opposite is true, any form of traditional soft clipping or distortion will decrease the overall dynamic range. This is true for the overall volume as well unless you have makeup gain.

 

In deed the soft knee function is a bit unusual in StandardClip. Instead of rounding off the hard knee so that the hard clipping occurs at higher input (so later), which would be normal, it raises the input in a curve shape.
Have a look at the hard knee


vs the soft knee

He didn't say dynamic range.

 

Also, the decrease in dynamic range is the result of a decrease in the loudness of peaks in the context of soft clippers.

 

Just get PeakEater: it's free and actively being developed. If you want to spend money get the Newfangled Saturate. It's the only clipper I found to really sound different from all the other generic waveshapers. It has a feature that retains the microdynamics, which are destroyed by standard waveshapers.

 

i think i seen that Reaperblog guy streaming this plugin a while back i will check it out and see how it is some times the free shit is better than the paid shit

 

Easy peasy.

You're welcome

 

Its one clipper which can be soft medium or hard, it also contains a soft limiter (also used in Apogee converters) and a hi frequency limiter. It is an emulation of two Lavry AD's which are about $9,000 ea, apparently accurate. The difference between clippers comes down to the oversampling used, the secret sauce is the soft limiter, it sounds great to me, sounds like a like a record but I think its too expensive.

 

This is what I use

D16 Group Audio Software