Use a clipper plugin during mixing or mastering to get your mix loud like the pros. You can also try it out on your drum bus. FL Studio Drums Buss Clipper Clipping Plugin Ableton Cubase Pro Tools Logic #flstudio #musicproducer
Alpha Master compressor plugin is amazing at this. Turn up the clipper on it then the gain knob and it sounds louder amd punchier but actually drops 3db’s in level
this is good info. i noticed i have a bad habit of making the kick and snare too loud in mixes because i was producing instrumentals for a while. i was wondering today how to handle this problem. this short alone has given me good insight on how to tackle the problem. thank you
This is something I had to figure out myself in the past and that no one on YT seems to talk about. I've googled how to stop drums to peak outside the rest of the music for years without good results. Glad someone has finally explained this, even though it's too late for me ;D
Dude, I was just about to write a very similar post. In 2021, I watched a mixing tutorial that briefly mentioned clipping and put me on the right path, but it still took about two years for me to figure out what this video laid out in 30 seconds or so.
Another pro-tip : Emphasize transients before clipping. Yes, it will be cut out by clippers anyway. However, emphasizing the transient before clipping preserves a bit more of the attack and energy of the mix.
A little tape saturation, transparent clipping then some transformer saturation is a great way to bring down the level without losing apparent loudness. It also sort of imparts a pleasant eq curve automatically cutting down on the moves you have to make. Also, low pass everything. It shouldn’t be a question of if, but rather hire much can you get away with. Low sub frequencies eat up sonic real estate taking away headroom, it takes energy to reproduce those frequencies even though you can’t hear them. Bass and kick can go from 40-60 even sometimes 90 hz, mid range instruments like snare, guitar and a lot of keys and synths can go 120-200hz and hi range stuff like hi hats or drum overhead mics can go up to 600 hz sometimes, as always use your ears and do what’s best for the mix at hand. Don’t be afraid to mix with low levels on your individual tracks, run them into a bus and do some general moves like eq compression and saturation in more broad strokes for glue them on your master bus you can get away with doing a lot less to get to the same place. Every time I mix I try to make less moves to get to the same place, working on your ear will lend to greater efficiency during mix sessions.
having an oscilloscope is nice for this. Also before any clipping, consider an arbitrary phase shift to the point with the most loudness, then clip. This way you can clip less but still attain as much or more loudness.
I just like to use Fruity Waveshaper, if you use a half-sine shape you can make things louder without really distorting it. It adds like more frequencies or distorts the sound in a way that makes it sound "fuller" without destroying it.
U can still distort the sound with waveshaper and change it in various ways. I use a lot of distortions, wave shapers, eq's, compressors and shit like that, so it can get complicated. 😂
I've been producing 14 years and your video just taught me something I never knew because I overlooked it all those years - HEADROOM. THANK YOU JERRY. seriously. God bless you and your family.
Apply a little bit less on the kick drum (1-2db) and then bus the kick with the 808 together and clip it 2-3db. That is one of the best advice I got in the past years. Mostly the kick will peak that much when it is played with a bass together. And that is only happing cause the kick and the bass are sharing the same freq range in which they are the loudest
@skrobie I did that all the time and was fine with it as long as the release time was quick enough for not to hear the "pumping". But if you isolate the low end (steep filter on the master up to 120hz) and listen to the low end with and with out the sidechain than you will hear that most of the time without the sidechain the low end is much more powerful. Keep in mind that the polarity of the kick has to be flipped on some 808 notes (depends on the base note of the kick) so you don't get phase cancelation
Clipping ( when done minimally ) is a game changer when it comes to getting loud without making your limiter fart. You’re getting headroom therefore you sound louder but yet stronger.
Why would you want to do it minimally? Wouldnt you want push it as far as it would go if it still sounded good? So few people are aware that the elysia alpha master busses clipper can shave 5-15db off a drum buss and rarely ever change the sound of anything.
You want loud and dynamic? Try to track your stuff through heavy transformer based gear. Those RMS levels will come to an almost pro level while breathing a lot it’s insane. Oh and also keep it simple if you’re going to eq and compress on the way in.
I literally told myself yesterday.. I hope I come across a video that explains this exact thing. You seriously just saved me potentially a lot of time trying to figure it out myself , thank you 🙏🏻🙏🏻
If you wanna get loud, throw conventional mixing knowledge out of the window. Every step of the process from production to arrangement to mixing to mastering has to be feared towards squeezing every last drop of dynamic range out of your sounds without audibly distorting them (or sometimes with audible distortion done tastefully, depending on the genre). Start producing with a basic mastering chain on (clipper into limiter that hits the kick at like 3dB-5dB reduction). It will affect all of your decisions, it needs to work just too hard to put it on at the end of a production. Listen to a track like Skrillex's Humble Remix or Mumbai Power and hear how the arrangement is done in a very minimalistic way. Reverb is sparse and controlled because any audio tail is gonna be heavily extended by all of the compression. Only a few elements are ever playing at the same time, he uses a lot of call and response for a reason. And lastly, some tracks just can't be pushed hard. So don't. Better a good mix at -8 LUFS than a fucking terrible mix at -4.
It's visible in the footage, but I want to verbalize for those who don't know here; it is advised to use hard clipping if the intended goal is to bring peaks down without changing the sounds too much. Soft clipping has a more audible distortion, hard clipping tends to be more clear if you don't push it too much.
Loud mix isn't really "pro". It's a nonsense standard in modern tracks of some of the genres, but it's not useful at all. Just get the LUFS right, adjust peak levels and keep track of dynamic loudness and you'll be good.
You don't have to do this if you've gain staged properly and leveled all instruments based on the kick and snare at the proper peak level, which is typically between -10 and -5db peak depends on how much head room you're going for.
No you need something more than just leveling and gain staging to go past -9 LUFS. All the top mix engineers are using clipping, saturation, distortion, and compression to lower the crest factor. They make their kick and snare feel like it’s peaking at -5 dB, but really they’re peaking at -10 dB. Gives them 5 extra dBs of loudness.
I understand your point of view, but in today’s world it seems like the mixes just keep getting louder and louder. It can be tough to stay competitive. I did mention to only clip the kick and snare to the point where it’s still a transparent cut. Usually past 2 dB and you’ll start to hear the difference, but I know that some mixers don’t stop there.
So I've never really understood compression, and clipping etc. However for snares and kicks I run them through the KiloHearts Tranisent Shaper, using the clip function. This explains why it makes them slap beautifully in the mix ✌️
clipping into the limiter was a technique back in the days . Was actually feeding compressor output to the limiter. Still done today of course in the analog domain . The problem is nowadays since everything is digital peaks are a dominating thing that almost nobody pays attention in the recording phase and expects to fix it in the mix.
@@mixwithjerry It isn't just look at producers that produced some actually good music rather than largely disposable dance music. Ask them if loudness is a priority in their mixes especially at the cost of dynamics and the introduced distortion. Its the dumb persons goal.
@@sacredgeometry kinda true, loudness-war killed the production of many otherwise great records. It's difficult to balance though, because consumer audio is sub par in most cases, so to get your music actually listened too in most cases you have to reach a certain loudness, else people won't put it in their playlist. It's a sad reality of the game
then grab spectre a harmonic enhancer, put it everywhere u like, then grab another clipper with freeform waveshape, and distort it as much as you like into a true peak limiter lol (course tho at this point. you'll need headphones that can show the highs harshness so you don't ruin ur mix)
I’ve never used a U87. It has 3 polar patterns, a pad, and a low cut feature that are factored into the price that I personally would never use. TLM-103 gets the job done for me.
Am I crazy? Does noone else just set device volume at 50% so you don’t blow eardrums out, then put all track volumes all the way up, and lower what you want until it sounds good?
And if you want to get your mix really loud, you apply compression, clipping, and limiting at multiple stages. My snare drum will often be compressed before it goes into a clipper. Then the whole drum bus will have compression, as well as a limiter to catch the very highest peaks. Then the mix bus will have a compressor too. And all that will go into a limiter. So you might see my snare pass through 5-7 stages of dynamic control. Almost every instrument gets similar treatment -- especially vocals, bass and the rest of the drum kit. Guitars might "only" get four stages of dynamic control. The type of dynamic control I use depend on the instrument. A clipper works better on drums than anything else, imo.
What if you only use analog hardware and only want to record in 1 take though? And not use a daw?? But still want to make thumping techno and want to emulate Alex chilton?
