The Science of Clipping - The ULTIMATE Tool for Loudness + Punch
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A video on the real secret to getting louder mixes and masters. You can use this in any DAW: Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Logic Pro, Pro Tools because the technique uses plugins.
If you struggle with getting your music loud, tune in! Using transparent clippers all through your mix will help you avoid aliasing, intermodulation distortion, dull transients, and quiet, wimpy masters.
★ SKIP TO SOMETHIN’ ★
0:00 Intro
0:49 What Do Clippers Do? Hard Clipping vs Soft Clipping
2:15 What Harmonics to Clippers Create?
3:05 Why I Use Clippers for Loud Mixing
4:37 Orange Clip by Schwabe Digital
5:22 The Clipper Setting that Erodes Headroom
6:26 Saturate by Newfangled Audio
7:00 StandardCLIP by SIR Audio Tools
7:40 Multi-Band Clipping in K-Clip by Kazrog
8:10 Gold Clip by Schwabe Digital
8:54 Gold Clip vs Other Clippers
10:02 All About Aliasing
11:24 Does Oversampling = Higher Quality?
12:10 Outro
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Some people have been asking about Standard Clip here, because they're not able to reproduce the same overshoots I observed in my session. So I captured a screenshot of the session, Standard Clip settings, and meters for you below. Also, Nicholas Di Lorenzo from @panorama_mastering just published a good video that shows how the overshoots happen in Standard Clip and why they happen on some material but not other material. You can watch that here: th-cam.com/video/GGiLAhHPHV0/w-d-xo.html.
First of all, I'm clipping very gently here. A couple dB on super short audio events. Mainly just the snare. I'm not pushing the clipper hard at all.
Check this out: capture.dropbox.com/UY8A1izXIQNtEJFU
You're most likely not seeing the overshoots because Standard Clip has 2 clipping stages. The first is oversampled, and the second is a 0X non-oversampled hard ceiling (called "Ceiling" in the plugin). If you leave the Ceiling engaged, then the second clipping stage hides the overshoots from you by applying more clipping. If you disengage the Ceiling parameter, you see the true peak level overshoots both in sample peak and true peak (true peak overshoots being higher).
The same is true for K-Clip and most other clippers with oversampling. They usually have a second 0X OS ceiling. And in fact, you see the exact same thing in iZotope RX Audio Editor. When you use the Resampling process to downsample anything, you'll see the parameter "Post Limiter" engaged by default. They need a post-downsampling limiter to catch these overshoots. This is because the Fourier transform process with the sinc function related to the lowpass filter used in anti-aliasing will cause higher and higher overshoots the more Fourier partial harmonics are used. The more oversampling used (and the more extreme the downsampling) the higher the overshoots will be.
Some people have commented that they're not seeing overshoots using Standard Clip with the ceiling off, so we're investigating this further. It could have to do with the material being run through the clipper and the project sample rate. I'll post more info here as I learn more.
Hey there. Btw, Gold Clip also has a « ceiling » function, it’s called « Clip Guard » (it’s found in the settings), and that’s probably why you don’t get overs. Edit: Gold Clip does also have a LPF, which also probably contributes to the absence of overs.
Hey hey. Yes, first thing I do with any plugin is read the manual and discuss the plugin with the creator or the support team. I'm aware of the Clip Guard and it is off. It's off by default, and I left it off. It has nothing to do with the presence or absence of overs in Gold Clip in this example. It's a legacy feature from before Ryan developed the anti-derivative anti-aliasing process currently used and now it's basically obsolete.
Regarding the LPF, there are actually quite a few places where low pass filtering can occur in Gold Clip.
Are you referring to the Box Tone feature? If so, I'm not using it. Or maybe you're referring to the Clip Filter, activated with the LPF button on the clipper shape area. I'm also not using that. I was careful to set each of the clippers up to be as identical as possible for this test.
If you're referring to the downsampling filter, then yes, every single plugin with oversampling has an LPF used in the downsampling process. That's par for the course and every single clipper I showed in this video has it.
It is serendipitous that you mention an LPF being the reason why I don't get overs. In fact, it's precisely the opposite.
The LPF in most plugins used as the anti-aliasing downsampling filter is the EXACT reason why the overshoots are created in the first place. The source of the overshoots is the process of band-limiting (lowpass filtering) the signal.
The reason I don't get overshoots in Gold Clip is because of the self-modulating LPF filter used in the anti-derivative anti-aliasing process Vlad created for Ryan.
@@warpacademy I was referring to the LPF on the Clipper button. Which IIRC is pre-clipper (which makes more sense).
I was pointing out those elements (LPF and clip guard/ceiling), because they are actual overshoot mitigators.
I might have a deeper dive into the ADAA technique.
Thanks for the exchange.
Hey hey. Yes, this is a good exchange and lots of deep dive content here. There's one fundamental thing that's key to understand regarding overshoots. It's that of filtering.
It's super counter-intuitive and it took me a good while to wrap my head around it. You're thinking that using an LPF is a way of mitigating overshoots. It doesn't do that. It's the process of band limiting hypersonic content (or audio range content) that causes the overshoots in the first place. The LPF is the source of them, not a way of removing or mitigating them. It's a head scratcher for sure hey? How can removing audio content possibly create higher peak level than with it? But that's how it works. You can test it yourself.
I'm working on a video about this right now.
The LPF in Gold Clip (on the clipper button) is not there to mitigate overshoots, it's there to reduce bright audible harmonics that can be created by clipping (moreso with hard clipping, but even with soft clipping). Use of the LPF will dull the harshness, but it will actually cause an increase in peak level, just like the anti-aliasing LPF that's used in virtually every other oversampling plugin.
For proof, take a look at iZotope RX in it's Re-sample function. When you go to downsample anything, you'll see an option for "Post Limiter". Why would a post limiter possibly be needed when all you're doing is downsampling? It's the anti-aliasing LPF that causes the need for a post limiter to deal with the overshoots.
I hope that makes sense. I needed Dave from DMG to walk me through the physics until I got it.
Cheers!
@@warpacademy yeah I know all that, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I talk about low passing the signal _prior_ to a clipper having Oversampling on. It will mitigate the overshoots of the oversampling filters. The less HF content, the less overshoots. I think Nicholas even did a video on that.
Holy crap, I saw someone mention the name "vespers" and had not idea that you were the guy from 10 years ago. Here you are making hits and I'm still in my bedroom haha
Hey Andy. Yes, I'm the same Vespers ;). Glad to see you around the channel still after all this time! I wish you all the best with your music.
I am in awe when I watch someone of your professionalism teach about such advanced topics. Thank you for this.
You’re most welcome. The science behind audio production is really fun stuff to dig into. Thanks for watching.
@@warpacademy what do think about training your ears and how age affects it? When you were comparing the clippers, I did hear the Gold was "different" (which you referred to as "open"), but in general, I don't always hear compression or more subtle A/B comparisons. And that bugs me, but I am also late to this whole scene. I am in my mid-50s and there is the hearing loss, especially at the high frequencies, that accompany that. Is mid-50s too late to really train your ears? Curious as to your take on this. Cheers
Much of this stuff is quite subtle to hear. The room and monitors you’re listening on have a large effect on whether you can hear things like this as well.
Yes with age you definitely get eventual HF hearing loss. I probably have some too but I’m also very careful about protecting my hearing.
I think that you can train your ears better at any age to get better than they were. It’s partially about being able to hear. And it’s partially about the ability to discriminate and interpret what is audible to you in A/B comparisons and that comes with practice.
Not advanced but i agree
Very informative. Thanks much.
Cheers! Thanks for the visit.
Keep in mind that the artifacts added by aliasing are explicitly non-harmonic. They're harmonics that would have been created but bounced off the Nyquist frequency and therefore render improperly.
You're right that for gritty DnB track, aliasing is probably pretty much negligible. But that won't always be the case depending on how much clipping you're doing and what genre you're working with.
100% on the same page with you. Well said. Aliasing foldback is usually described as non-musical compared to harmonic series. The reason why it works here, is that it's on the transients mainly, which contain all frequencies. And the rest of the song is very harmonically dense as well, with tons of saturation and distortion in the sound design and mixing, which has a cumulative masking effect.
In the end, I did use oversampling in Gold Clip on the master. But I did not use oversampling anywhere on the clippers in the mix, unless they were soft clippers creating audible harmonics.
Cheers!
Exactly
Priceless info as always ! Thanks a lot.
My pleasure! Thanks for being a subscriber. All the best!
Great explanation thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Great video, thank you for the R&D
You bet. Thanks.
Great video. Thanks
Glad you liked it! And thanks for being a subscriber to the channel.
Love how you break down complicated subjects and make them easy to understand, with practical advice!
I appreciate that! Thanks Tom.
Man this was probably the most helpful video I watched on clippers. Even doing it on a dnb song! You are a legend. Hope you’ll have some more dnb examples in your videos. Subscribed!
Glad it helped! Clippers have totally transformed my mixing workflow so I'll be including them a lot in my video. And...we just are about to launch a new bass music label at Warp Academy and I'll be doing all the mixing and mastering for it. So you'll see a lot of dnb and mid-tempo bass music in my upcoming videos as I work on tunes for release with our artists. Cheers!
Great video!
Thanks!
This is RIGHT up my alley. Videos like this are exactly the reason I am subscribed. Its hard to find content on TH-cam that delve into slightly more advanced topics, without having to pander to the newbie that jsut downloaded their DAW a week ago. Keep it comin!!
Awesome, thank you!
Great video - did not know about this
Thanks! Glad you're looped in. This also happens on every single plugin that has oversampling, not just clippers ;). It's just usually hidden by a non-oversampled final hard clipping / limiting stage.
watched your video on how to master loud but retain clarity recently and it instantly fixed my problems
until now id always struggle (I've been producing lightly as a hobby for over 2 years now) to hit a good loudness without ruining it, but now i know exactly what was my issue
this channel is great
Right on. Glad to hear the videos could help you make some solid forward moves. Cheers!
Nice knowledge. Checking out that DMG plugin
Glad it was helpful! DMG Limitless has a unique algorithm that’s amazing. It’s one of my top limiters. In fact I find I use it most frequently.
You blew my mind with ozone back in the day. Awesome to see you still killing it.
Thanks! Yeah I think that was back in Ozone 4 right? Old video. Thanks for still following the channel. I can’t believe Ozone is in V11 now!
Thank you for this Homie, absolute gold👌🏽💽
No problem 👍
This was a super cool Video as always. I think oversampling can be genuinely useful, especially when it comes to more aggressive clipping but in this case it makes absolute sense to leave it off. Thanks for the Input!
Exactly, you nailed it. If you're clipping aggressively where you're using soft clipping knee to affect more than just a micro-transient, or you're using hard clipping to dig into more of the signal (IE a longer audio event) then it makes sense to oversample to reduce audible aliasing from all the harmonics. That's the "tone shaping" style of processing that I mentioned at the beginning.
In this case, I'm clipping off micro-transients where any aliasing is getting completely masked by the presence of the transient, or it's adding harmonic density to the transient in a way that adds perceived loudness, as David Gnozzi stated.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
nice info about the oversampling
Thanks. Keep in mind this also happens with limiters. I’ll be making another video on that soon. The plugins where oversampling definitely is needed is in saturation / distortion and soft clipping where lots of audible harmonics are being generated.
@@warpacademy these little nuggets are so helpful
Glad to hear that.
Love this. I never thought of aliasing not mattering if all you are chopping is transients.
Indeed. David Gnozzi FTW on that one. He laid it out very clearly. Makes total sense when you think of aliasing as just more distortion on an all frequencies super short signal.
Great demo and info. I use Gold Clip on the 2 bus just before the Slate FG-X 2. I love the Gold Clip because it is clean, but it can get gritty if that's what you want.
I have had Orange for a week, and would use it per track. I also have SIR Standard Clip, and have used it on the 2 bus.
Anyway, very interesting info on oversampling. I don't typically use oversampling in most plug-ins already.
Right on. Nice to hear a bit about how you're using clipping plugins. Wishing you all the best with your mixes and masters!
Thanks great video
Glad you enjoyed it
Such a great video, Vespers. Thanks for it!
Glad you enjoyed it. Cheers!
fantastic video
Thanks for the visit
Thanks!
My pleasure!
I remember Baphometrix saying something about not turning on oversampling in his Clip To Zero Strategy series of videos - while extremely comprehensive, I got a little lost in the series, this video has cleared things up for me so thank you (easier when it’s d’n’b too!)
Right on. And yes, Baphometrix did have a video about oversampling in track clippers like this. They recommended the exact same things, if memory serves. I wanted to do a video about it because, while extremely detailed and comprehensive, I found many of the Baphometrix videos to be quite long winded and drawn out. 90 minute run times were quite normal so I'm not surprised that a lot of people got lost in the series.
I respectfully disagree about Baphometrix stuff being too long etc. Baph just covers all the bases and goes into very clear detail which helps many people who are not already familiar with some of what is discussed.
...all that said, this video is great too!! And very appreciated!!!
Oh I’m not saying it’s too long for me. I love detail oriented stuff. It’s too long for the average person on TH-cam. Short form content like TikTok and Reels have destroyed people’s attention span. The average watch time on most TH-cam videos is less than 5 minutes.
So rather than making a huge long 90 minute video it’s better for the audience to make a series of shorter videos.
No disrespect to the Baph stuff it’s great. It’s just not packaged for the average learner on TH-cam and I consider that stuff very carefully when I’m creating content.
Cheers.
great content
Thanks!
the best video about the clipping! thanks a lot
You're welcome!
This is gold. We need more of that content!
Thanks Thomas. I've got LOTS more of this stuff coming down the pipe soon. Subscribe to the channel and stay in touch!
Very interesting.
Cheers!
I flippin love the AB tests in mastering videos 👌
Me too!
Awesome vid. Thanks!
You bet!
whhaaatttt I've never seen this demonstration before. great info
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.
The demo from around 4 minutes got me engaged. Too many mixing channels are using weak demos.
Thanks. I like to use my actual mixing and mastering projects so they’re real world examples. Cheers.
So true, I thought that too.
Thanks. I'll definitely be doing that in most of my upcoming videos. Cheers!
Thank's for going so deep into that topic
Thanks for watching and commenting.
This is great, more of this please, detailed videos on all the nuggets and trinkets, 👊
Cheers
Will do! More to come. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Really appreciate this video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
A lot of people complain about the cost of Gold Clip but you really have to give it a go if you haven't yet. It's definitely got some special sauce going on.
Exactly. Plus, they put it on sale every now and again. It's much more than a clipper. And as far as clippers go, it's the king.
Thanks for the useful info.
My pleasure!
this is very interesting info, keep those coming
Thanks, will do!
Great knowledge and well explained. Keep on going.
Thanks for watching.
gold content!
Good pun!
Great video, i like clipping the individual busses before the mixbus.
Same here! I clip many individual tracks, then mix busses and then the master. Depending on the song.
Awesome video !!
Thanks!
I agree! 100 percent! I used to use limiters in my mix and constantly was always faced with lots of troubles, UNTIL I started using only clippers. Im 100 PERCENT a fan of using CLIPPERS! great video! very informational! thank you!
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yeah, I've found that clippers are a nice alternative to limiters when used in the mix on individual sounds and busses. Then I just use a limiter on my master, last in chain. Sometimes, with bass-heavy material like 808s, subs, and kicks, clippers don't perform well and produce too much distortion. In that case I will use a lightweight track limiter, DMG Track Limit, which is able to do the job with much less distortion. Cheers!
@@warpacademy I only use compressors(on my main bus channels, DRUMS/BASS/SUB ETC. when needed. and reeally havent found a situation arise where I need to use alimiter in my master mix. as long as my mix is sound and landing at -6.0 dbs, im usually golden in my master. but maybe I am missing out by not using a limiter?? I dont know
So you’re using a clipper last in chain on your master instead of a limiter then?
If you drive sub heavy material into a clipper you’ll get super audible nasty distortion. That’s why I use a limiter on the master. Limiters don’t do that unless you push them too hard.
@@warpacademy The 1st plug in I utilize in my master chain is MAXIMUS, which is limiter/compressor of sorts, i utilize this to focus my compression in seperated low/mid low/mids/mid highs/ and High frequencies, from there I fully utilize Ozone. I keep it as simple as possible although my Ozone mastering chain does utilize around 5-8(pending the song) different tools/plugins to get to that desired sound
Sweet. If you’re getting good results then stick with it :)
thx boss
No problem
Amazing video. Wish you added to the comparisson, clipping with the Glue Compressor in Ableton. I´ve been using only the clipping option that comes with the Glue for years now in the master before the limiter. And it´s free :) All the best!
Thanks. Regarding the Glue compressor and soft clip. It’s very basic and while it can and does do clipping I don’t like that approach. I like a controllable knee, control with oversampling (IE different settings), and the ability to gain link with a waveform display. Also seeing how much clipping is occurring helps!
Great! Love the IK Soft Clipper to control the knee, I find it to be quite transparent, and the harmonics are really pleasant on the master.
Edit: and damn, Gold Clip sounds amazing, beyond my price point for what I do though, lol.
Thanks for the tip on IK Soft Clipper. Haven't used that one yet. But yeah, Gold Clip is the boss! Maybe they'll do a BF sale? Cheers.
exxelent and clear...again 💚
Glad you think so!
So interesting. What are your thoughts on Acustica Audio's ASH clipper?
Hey hey. That’s one I haven’t used actually. I use a ton of clippers but I’ve really narrowed down what I actually need to Orange Clip, Gold Clip and Newfangled Saturate.
Great video, Drew. Thanks for sharing ✨ Studio looks amazing 🎉🚀
My pleasure. Thanks for the visit!
Gold content. Thanks for sharing Vespers!
My pleasure!
Exactly what my test reveal to me, cool video, thanks 🤙🏽
Right on. Yeah, this happens on every clipper with oversampling (as long as you disable the second, non-oversampled hard ceiling) because of the Fourier transform process that happens at the jump discontinuity of a square wave or transient.
Great video, thanks. Btw what are your thoughts on oversampling in limiters? Like Pro L2 etc
Cheers
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed the video. Regarding over sampling in limiters, I’ll do a video on that very soon. Typically I don’t do it but I’ll explain and show why in the deep dive video.
Looking forward to it 😊
Stay tuned!
killer video. very helpful in understanding some of the concepts that have eluded me re: clipping.
any recommendations for fairly aggressive clipping approaches? I'm interested in over-the-top character of some lofi trap/soundcloud rap where they are clipping the hell out of FL albeit the clipper in FL is fairly limited. I have kclip but I'm not sure if I'm fully taking advantage of its functionality
Glad you enjoyed it. First step, get Orange Clip from Schwabe Digital. It is an exact copy of the FL clipper and its soft clipping is apparently identical.
To get more aggressive with clipping you can use hard clipping for harsher sounding odd harmonics or soft for more round and warm harmonics. Use oversampling in this case for sure. As you’ll get audible aliasing.
@@warpacademy followed your advice and the results I'm getting from Orange Clip are *substantially* better than before. a most worthwhile purchase. can't thank you enough 🙏
Holy shit! I haven’t watched a video from this channel in a few years and it feels like a completely different channel, but in a really good way. Like this is really high level, technical stuff here. Thank you for this!
Thanks and welcome back to the channel!
really solid vid, didn't know this before
Glad you enjoyed it.
this is really interesting - I've been disabling oversampling on freeclip (which I use for run-of-the-mill track/bus hardclipping) but I never thought about checking for overshoots when using KClip on my master. Now i wonder if it's even the best option for master clipping. Also, I noticed (when I check the delta signal) that kclip is doing some kind of noise-shaping on the signal which I thought was interesting - but maybe that's related to the overshoots.
Hey Albert. Thanks for joining the discussion. I've used K-Clip a lot and have loved it. It was my primary track clipper before I started using Orange Clip, which I now prefer. Keep in mind that you should avoid using multi-band mode in K-Clip as the crossovers are non-linear phase and cause dramatic level spikes as I showed. K-Clip should be fine for a mastering clipper, if you're going gentle and using a limiter after it. Never put an oversampling clipper last in chain, unless you check that it's maintaining a hard ceiling without overshoots.
I much prefer Gold Clip now as a bus and mastering clipper, due to the oversampling algorithm. Not all oversampling is created equal. Also, the configuration of the downsampling anti-aliasing filter is very different between various plugins. Some use a brickwall, some use a less steep filter, some use minimum phase and others use linear phase. That may very well be the difference in what you're hearing in the delta signal.
All LPFs have ringing artifacts due to the decay of Fourier transform partials and the number of them used around a jump discontinuity. Because any downsampled signal must be band limited, every single oversampling plugin creates overs from the filtering process. Many of them are just hidden by an additional clipper.
I still remember when I figured out how useful clipping is for mixing, I was new to FL Studio and wanted to distort a sound, wanted to try out fruity soft clipper since it was in the distortion section, but the plugin has no gain, so I used a plugin before to drive it into the clipper. I was very surprised just how far I had to push into the clipper before it actually started sounding distorted, then I started just putting it everywhere instead of limiters since Fruity Limiter does sound kinda trash by default.
Ah yes, FL Studio is pretty much made for this mixing style. The Orange Clip plugin that I really like was modelled on the FL Studio clipper. So you're right on track there. It has a very specific sound that's become woven into modern music. Cheers!
This is an amazing video, instantly subscribed. Impressed by the quality and depth of insight!
Welcome aboard! Thanks for subscribing.
Just the lesson I needed, would you use clipping on your drum buss with the defangle and the gold clip on your master or would that create problems? I noticed too much clipping on the drum buss messes with the hi hats too much so only used it max 25% but really interested to try this gold clip on my mix buss…
Glad to hear that. I tend to use the Newfangled Saturate in areas where I’m clipping more heavily because it has a unique spectral “detail preservation” feature. Read up on the manual for that. It’s interesting but I don’t always like it.
I typically am using Gold Clip on my busses / sub-mixes and then my master. Not all sub-mixes will need clipping tho. Like vocals or subs I don’t clip usually. Anything more pure and clean doesn’t clip well unless it’s more soft clipping.
Didn't realize what I really wanted to do with my life until now.
I'm 35 only a year into learning mixing and mastering.
Learned more than I thought I could on my own but with the really advanced stuff like this I am lost.
No wonder I can't get my mix loud enough for release.
Don't feel bad. I've been at this since 2001. I didn't start focusing on mixing and mastering until about 5 years ago, and there is still much for me to learn as well. Thankfully there's so much good stuff on TH-cam or on paid sites these days in the form of online courses from really good engineers. I wish you all the best in your journey mate.
@@warpacademy Thank you! Made great progress so far.
Looking into getting some more exclusive paid plug ins like the ones you mentioned in this video. Thanks again.
Right on. All the best with your mixes and see ya round the channel!
Excellent!
Super cool video. Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
Very useful info, thank you.
In the digital domain we tend to overshoot to what we think are standards and decisions for better quality, and those decisions can bring your CPU to its knees. When really it is a slight transient defect you can’t even hear. Always look forward to your videos.
Glad it was helpful! Yes you make an excellent point there. When using plugins in your mix you’re using a lot of them. If you oversample them it’ll consume way too much CPU and in this case it’s totally unnecessary. Cheers!
Thank you!
There's a great playlist about this subject at Baphometrix channel, too
Thanks for the visit! And yes the Baphometrix content is great.
great video, nice
Thanks for the visit and for subscribing to the channel.
This is very interesting, i tried Standard Clip myself and i noticed the same issue. Looks a little better with mixed phase instead linear, but there is still some overshoot compared without OS. Didn't tried the mixed phase with more pole (maybe it's better for peaks) but i'm not so sure if mixed phase should be used in clippers, i'd like to know your thoughts about this too
Hey Frankie. Nice to hear your insights. Yeah, Standard Clip is one of the few clippers that allows you some control over the anti-aliasing LP filter. The configuration of the LPF will certainly affect overshoots, because the the source of the overshoots is band limiting the signal, removing the supersonic frequencies that have a flattening effect on jump discontinuities and square wave type signals.
Linear phase LPF in clippers would typically be used if you're running the clipper in parallel (some clippers have wet/dry, or you may be running it on a return). Also, FIR vs IIR filters will have different ringing artifacts most noticeable around jump discontinuities (and by that I mean transients and square wave type jump signals where you have a vertical or near vertical jump in amplitude). And those ringing artifacts are also related to the number of Fourier harmonics / sine wave partials that are used to represent the signal. Specifically the decay rate of those ringing artifacts.
For me, I almost never run clippers in parallel. But I would test linear phase vs minimum phase in clippers when you get the option to do so (such as in Gold Clip or Standard Clip) and especially when you're using it on the master. See if you can hear a difference. This is way up close to Nyquist, so the ability to perceive a difference is questionable.
@@warpacademy I tried linear vs minimum few years ago, and i preferred linear cause i felt a better response with transients, but i didn't digged too much. I think now it's time to do some proper testing again with multiple materials cause i don't use parallel clipping neither, but usually just on my master.
Thank you for your detailed reply, is much appreciated!
Sounds like a plan. Let us know what you discover.
man it's abot time SOMEBODY said this
Thanks. Nice to see you around the channel. Congrats on all the releases and growth of your channel. Looks like you've got a nice following. Cheers!
Mannnnnn you just blew out this whole mystery of oversampled plug-ins are creating a better sound, it always bothered me and now you’ve made this all so clear to me, thanks brother ❤
Happy to help!
Great video! A few times, I've cascaded a few clippers in a similar way people do it with compression, in order to address and attenuate overshoots back to my desired threshold, clip the clippers! lol
Great tip. Yeah it can get interesting to put a hard and then a soft clipper in series. Or to hard clip an individual track and then a bus for sure. Wherever you get a summing point.
I love your channel sooo much! Thank you!!🎉
Thank you so much!!
Great video. A question for you, what is the best clipper to use on my nails? 😂
If you have delicate nails use a soft-clipper ;)
@@warpacademy 😄 great advice 👍
Can you do the same with a stock Ableton effect? Compressor maybe?
Good question. Certainly not the compressor. Wrong tool for the job. It’s way too sluggish. But with the Saturator on hard clip mode yes. Or with Soft Clip enabled and “high quality” (IE oversampling) on.
But really just get a clipper. It’ll give you more control. Free Clip even will get the job done.
Great point about oversampling and overshoots. I often felt my mix sounded better before rendering at higher oversampling. I have confirmation bias now 😊
Exactly. Also oversampling changes the sound of things quite a bit sometimes so using a different offline oversampling rate from your realtime rate is something I avoid. You need to be able to monitor things if you plan to use it.
In the first 15 seconds I can hear how loud and clear the audio is even on my crappy phone speaker!
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Duuuuuude
wow, this is amazing. You have answered so many of my questions in a short video. This is a place but I always feel my students and my artist investing to make themselves better. I want you to see me what you know and paying you for it is an honor. Thank you so much for the time you have taken to assemble all the business information I just videofor all of the information if people could take the time with thank you. Looking forward to working with your company. Dj, DRWATTZ.
You're so welcome!
Did not expect a dnb tune within this video, which is precisely what I've been writing. Hell yeah what up my junglists!
Right on. I love DnB. One of my favourite genres. Cheers!
Where can I find your music ? I'm a DJ and bwg9nne producer :3
@@kan.music9 I wish I was in a position to share. I am getting close on this track though.
with analog gear, soft clipping=tube, hard clipping=transistors
Thanks for the comment. Plus analog doesn't alias.
Great observations!
Funilly enough; even with oversampling; I'm not getting TP overs on my standard clip ceiling; how hard are you pushing to get over's +0.6dB?
Hey Nicholas. Nice to see ya round the channel mate! I captured a screenshot of the session, Standard Clip settings, and meters for you below. I'm clipping very gently here. A couple dB on super short audio events. Mainly just the snare.
capture.dropbox.com/UY8A1izXIQNtEJFU
You're most likely not seeing the overshoots because Standard Clip has 2 clipping stages. The first is oversampled, and the second is a 0X non-oversampled hard ceiling (called "Ceiling" in the plugin). If you leave the Ceiling engaged, then the second clipping stage hides the overshoots from you by applying more clipping. If you disengage the Ceiling parameter, you see the true peak level overshoots both in sample peak and true peak (true peak overshoots being higher).
The same is true for K-Clip and most other clippers with oversampling. They usually have a second 0X OS ceiling. And in fact, you see the exact same thing in iZotope RX Audio Editor. When you use the Resampling process to downsample anything, you'll see the parameter "Post Limiter" engaged by default. They need a post-downsampling limiter to catch these overshoots. This is because the Fourier transform process with the sinc function related to the lowpass filter used in anti-aliasing will cause higher and higher overshoots the more Fourier partial harmonics are used. The more oversampling used (and the more extreme the downsampling) the higher the overshoots will be.
@@warpacademy Super interesting; I understand why/how this is occurring; I don't use the ceiling feature; and don't get overs; I'll have to share with you my OS settings under-the hood of standard clip, see if they match up!
Not getting overs with ceiling off here neither
That's certainly interesting! I wonder what the deal is. My session is at 48 kHz, which matches the mix sample rate. I've found overs happen in Standard Clip (and any other clipper except Gold Clip) on any oversampling setting. I've tested 4X all the way up to 16X and they all seem to produce the same measured overs. I've found they occur on simple material (single tracks, like a snare) as well as complex material like a whole mix, and they seem to happen even when clipping very lightly (1-2 dB).
One thing to note is that the overshoots are triggered by jump discontinuities, like a square wave or a drum transient. Anywhere you have an abrupt change in level, you typically see the overshoots as you add harmonics to the Fourier transform.
Let me know if your settings are different or if there's something you've set up under the hood. Cheers!
Thanks for sharing. What settings are you using in Standard Clip and what material are you running through it? There needs to be a sharp jump discontinuity to see the overshoots, like a square wave or sharp drum transient.
Were you using the gold clip in hard or soft clipping? If it was hard then surely all the clippers would sound the same as hard clipping is identical regardless of the clipper
Hey Ed. In general, you'd think that all hard clippers would sound the same. It's really quite simple math. If a sample = more than the clipper ceiling, make that sample output = clipper ceiling. That's it. And yes, I was using Gold Clip as a hard clipper.
However, in practice, these clippers are actually quite different, especially when you start oversampling them. Anything that oversamples will have to run through a downsampling anti-aliasing filter. Those filters can be linear phase, minimum phase, and can have wildly different slopes and frequency settings with respect to Nyquist. They could be brick walls or more gradual slopes. Just look at the SRC / Resample function in iZotope RX Audio Editor and you'll see all the options. Most clipping plugins do this under the hood, hard coded, or give you only very limited control over the LP filter.
Saturate from Newfangled audio has a spectral clipping algorithm with "detail preservation" which makes it perform very differently even when hard clipping. Gold Clip has a totally unique anti-derivative anti-aliasing process, which is why it sounds so good and doesn't produce overs. Gold Clip modulates the filter settings based on the frequency and amplitude of the signal. It also has other processing in addition to the clipper (the Gold knob, modelled on the Lavry Gold hardware and the Alchemy parameter which acts like HF tape saturation).
If you're simply hard clipping with no oversampling and just touching the micro-transients, then they sound more similar. Oversampling (and the corresponding downsampling and band-limiting process) is what changes the sound a lot (and is also the source of the overshoots).
@@warpacademy Thanks for the detailed response, i found it hard to tell the difference, it would be intersting to do a null test to see what exactly what the diffference is. Flatline is my fave clipper, mainly because of the GUI, i did try a demo of Gold clip and found the gold part quite interseting even tho it was subtle. i might look into it again now, buy i cant do a null test cos my demo was up last year.
Hey Ed. Yeah, the Gold knob in Gold Clip is an emulation of the Lavry Gold hardware ADC. It inflates low level information in a unique way. Very useful. I also really like the box tone feature and Alchemy. Worth testing out. Perhaps you could request another demo from Ryan, I'm sure he'd help you out. Cheers!
Are you using both orange clip and gold clip? Since I saw your last video I've considered getting gold clip but now that I see you have orange clip which I know is more affordable. I'm just wondering what you would recommend, gold or both?
It’s a good question. I do have both. Gold Clip is a best in class mastering and buss clipper. But it’s too heavy to use all through my mix on many individual sounds. So you need a track clipper that’s more lightweight and that’s what I use OC for. If you can just get one, get Gold Clip. Also, stay tuned on my channel as I’ll have a video coming out soon with Ryan, the creator of both clippers. We did an interview.
@@warpacademy thanks for the quick response, you're a gem of a resource for this community 🙏
Much appreciated. Thanks for being a subscriber!
Hey I have a bit of a strange question. I'm voicing over a movie soundtrack acapella with a below average microphone. There's a small amount of noise when I record with the microphone. There are sometimes a dozen layers in the track, would the small amount of noise in each recording have a meaningful impact on the mix, and if so, is there a way to lessen it?
Hey hey. It's one of those "it depends" things. How much noise is there, how compressed is it going to be, is it noticeable and obtrusive in the final mix? There are noise reduction tools these days that are really good.
Usually some noise floor is totally fine. If you start stacking it up on multiple tracks and then compressing the mix, it can eventually become very noticeable. In that case, you'll need a de-noising tool like iZotope RX.
@@warpacademy thank you! Can I use that on the final master? Or will I need to use that on a per track basis?
Nearly everything in terms of audio repair is best done on individual tracks rather than leaving it all summing up to your master and dealing with it there.
@@warpacademy legend, thank you
My pleasure.
I noticed at 07:46 the in and out for each band on KClip was [in = 0 out = 0] but before enabling the 4-band mode it was [in = 6.0 and out = -6.0]
With all the clippers I set the input gain to +6 and the output to -6 to get the same amount of clipping. The multi-band just splits that into frequency ranges. The overs when in multi-band happened due to the crossovers being IIR filters and not FIR filters. The IIR filters cause phase rotation which causes a significant increase in peak level.
Do you have a recommended plugin for monitoring crest factor in real time?
Sure. You can use anything that uses a PLR (peak to loudness) meter. ADPTR Metric AB does this. So do many metering plugins. They'll basically calculate the peak to short term or peak to integrated (long term) LUFS calculation.
@@warpacademy Great news since I have Metric AB and didn't know that was there! Thanks a lot
Sweet. It's a great plugin. I love that one. Cheers!
Could you please go more in depth about hard clipping during mixing?
Thanks for the request. Absolutely. This is one of my planned next videos. I want to show you what I did in the mix to transform this song from A to B. Stay tuned on the channel. Make sure you subscribe and enable all of the notifications so you see the uploads. Cheers!
Another good reason of not using oversampling, depends on the filter is being used for the downsampling, they tend to create pre-ringing or a long post ringing.
Hey Tianpei. It's insightful that you point that out, because it's not actually the oversampling alone that creates these overshoots. It's the action of the downsampling anti-aliasing lowpass filter band limiting the signal. It's the removal of HF content that actually generates the overshoots.
And of course, any cut filter will create pre-ringing if it's FIR and post-ringing if it's IIR. The decay rate (ringing) of the frequency components depends on the number of Fourier partials present. When you have lots of Fourier partials, the decay is fast. When you have only a few, the decay is slow.
And the ringing artifacts are the most overt around jump discontinuities such as a square wave or a transient.
@@warpacademy Exactly! Btw I still believe there is only one way of hard clipping or wave shaping to a hard clip state. So in theory the stock clipper is actually the best clipper and the most accurate. Other clippers might add some distortion before the clipping stage so that it sounds “better”.
To know which clipper to use, you have to carefully consider a few things. Are you only ever going to hard clip? Will you ever need oversampling? In that case, you will want to use a more full featured plugin as the oversampling and LPF sound quite different between plugins. If you ever want to soft-clip you will also want to use a plugin clipper, unless you're in FL and have a nice one built in. Still, I don't think the FL clipper oversamples and you'd want that for soft clipping.
AFAIK plugin clippers do not add any distortion before the clipping stage. I mean, why would they do that?
But yeah, if all you want to do is non-oversampled hard clipping, I mean you could just clip your DAW master output and that would do it too. You just have very little control.
Yes that is what I mean, a non oversampled hard clipping effect should always sound the same no matter what plugin you use. But there are enough plugin manufacturers that add some extra sneaky sauce in order to distinguish them from another. Like BSA audio clipper adds a little LP filter at 20hz, beside that it’s exact the same as the stock clipper.
Ah yes. You're correct there. A hard clipper without oversampling is a very simple, and AFAIK, universally identical, calculation. Things only get different when you're introducing soft clip knee shapes and OS.
So if there’s a “high quality” switch (as there are on FAC’s Punchlab and KnockClipper) it’s best to just leave them off? I’d say both of these wouldn’t be used as master clippers though
Hey hey. In general, in plugins with "high quality" settings and the like, that triggers oversampling. You're correct. For track clippers (IE clippers on individual drum or transient sounds, clipping in the way I describe here - short audio events) then it makes complete sense to leave oversampling / high quality off. If you don't hear negative distortion / aliasing, then why activate it and eat up your CPU? Also pay careful attention to your peak level. To a test. Render your signal to audio and look at the result. I always see big spikes over the clipper ceiling on drums when using oversampling, which is exactly what I'm trying to remove using the clipper in the first place.
On a master clipper, I would recommend using oversampling. The overshoots can be dealt with by a limiter downstream and then you reduce the chance of any audible aliasing. For this I prefer Gold Clip because it doesn't create overshoots in the first place. Cheers!
At last someone who knows what he's talking about on the internet
Thanks for watching.
OKAY so i finally tried this out. I went to my project (I mix and master at the same time dont shoot me I love it) And i took off the over sampling on all the clippers. i use kclip to hard clip, then use standard clip pro clipper mode to add some SLIIIGGGHHHTTTT expansion into a clipper. Max 1 db of clipping. I was 4x oversampling on al of them. And the sonics are so much more different. Its noticble right away when i A/B them. I also notice that the 4x oversampling changes my wave form, make some peaks smaller for some reason idk why but then I have 0.2 db more headroom when I dont use oversampling. I also notice that the 4x makes things kinda squashed together. Ruining the open separation and depth that i worked so hard to learn and test and create in the box. The 1x sounds a bit darker, but this is a dark mix, its supposed to be dull and sad. The production is also using dull tracks. That "dullness" I am getting is the OG sound i was after. I also noticed the 808 and snare opens up and you can hear the syncopated rhythm better. I am so shocked that this many changes happened using the over sampling. I over sampled on my kick, snare, > kick and snare buss, > drum buss and my master chain. Insane.
I am still over sampling on certain plugins that inject distortion and harmonics on non transient tracks and using oversampling on a saturation plugin on my mix buss but its paralleled saturation through the plugin mix knob mix knob. Never gonna use oversampling again on transients. I am def gonna look into gold clip as well and see a new A/B
Thanks for sharing your experience. This is very similar to how I work. I use oversampling on devices that generate harmonics that can be heard on more sustained material (saturation / distortion, soft clipping on things other than micro-transients).
When you upsample, the clipper is now reading and addressing formerly inter-sample peaks ("true peaks") and clipping those. Plus oversampling / downsampling / LPF anti-aliasing filter will change the waveform, as you noticed, changing the harmonic structure by filtering out supersonic frequencies.
Kudos to you for actually testing this out in a mix and observing the results for yourself! That's a how you learn and improve. Cheers!
@@warpacademy Yes thankyou again for the amazing lesson. Its these little master class theories that separate the advanced from the pro's
My pleasure. Thanks for the comment. See you around the channel!
gold peak ftw. got louder and maintained it's character without squashing the signal to death.
Right on.
Before committing to clipping a track, or adding a clipped track to a mix, compare the track to a clean version, a (hard, multiband, like Aphex Dom II) limited version, and a fast attack high ratio compressor. Adjust for identical "loudness" to your ears not level with the same general amount of clipping. . Decide if you like what you hear. All level shaving is not the same.
Good insights! Always be willing to experiment and try different effects and settings. I've done this day in and day out for years. For me, I'm very familiar with how limiting sounds (love it last in chain and sometimes on busses) and how compression sounds (usually not my favourite tool as it produces modulation distortion when set fast enough to catch small transients, but I love it on vocals, basses, pads and more sustained material). Thanks for the comment!
Dammmiittt now my entire system is gonna change after hearing the differences lmao.
Prolly gonna get my hands on gold clip and change up my master chain. Question tho, what do you think about over sampling using using a saturation plugin? Also what about using Oxford inflator on the master? I imagine it would be better used spread on the sun bud tracks instead.
Hey hey. Good question. Definitely oversample in saturation. That’s when I 100% do use it. Oxford Inflator, I don’t use that plugin so I won’t comment on it.
@@warpacademy cool thankyou!
You bet!
Can't I just use ozone 11 on master and clue compressor, limiter all good in Ableton?
Good question! I’m talking about using clipping all through your mix. That’s critical.
Also Ozone is not a clipper and doesn’t have a clipper. It has a nice limiter but not a clipper. You can of course get great masters in Ozone 11.
Don’t use the Ableton limiter. It’s not meant for mastering. The Glue compressor is pretty nice though. On busses or in mastering.
Hope that helps. Cheers!
Honestly, I find the AI mastering online tools do amazing job and are free.
They're getting better for sure. Even the auto mastering in Ozone is quite good now. I still prefer doing it manually myself, but that's because I do some rather unconventional things and I always tweak my mix several times once I hear the results through a mastering chain.
what u mean u “hope we got something out of this one” ?
thank you man…eye opening
Cheers Paul. Thanks for watching and for the comment.
Yes, I could hear aliasing. People focus on the main tone strikes for distortion. That's not where it's evident. Focus on the spatial effects. Oversampling sends the problem out of range. You're right- oversampling doesn't change your signal. It moves a signal competitor off the field of play.
Hey hey. Thanks for joining the conversation. Maybe one day I'll do a fully blinded test for people. That would be fun. On the master, it's typical for me to use Gold Clip with oversampling (you can't turn oversampling off in Gold Clip anyways) so any aliasing on the parts you mentioned would be reduced or completely inaudible. I went with Gold Clip in my version of the master.
What I'm talking about mostly in this video is using clippers all throughout the mixing process, as well as the master. Especially on drums. And for that, it's nearly impossible to hear aliasing, and if you do, it's actually not a bad effect at all. Referring to what David Gnozzi said, and what Dave Gamble said later on in the video.
So for track clipping, it makes no sense to me to activate oversampling. But yes on the master, if you hear aliasing. Cheers!
Thoughts on FIRE THE CLIP?
Hey hey. That plugin is pretty bare bones. I wouldn’t use it. For me I want the waveform display and loads more control. Control over the knee shape and amount etc.