This is a perfect example of trust your ears and do what sounds good. We’d all probably naturally reach this conclusion to clip a little bit if people didn’t make it sound like it’s a sin to clip
@@chinmeyswayit’s the same principles behind flying by looking outside your aircraft and not at your instruments, you obviously need/ utilize both but you focus on your peripheral
Back in the analog days as a band member, I always noticed that the engineers would have the meters on the drum channels flashing red on the hits, and I wondered if it was OK. Maybe this is the rediscovery of that technique?
Ngl, I've been doing this when I mastered and I was always scared when my boss comes around when I'm doing this before I Limit/compress the transients. You just gave me confidence to say I know what I'm doing! Thanks man, and keep at it
This is the way I did things back in the 90s when I started building my first home studio based around a Tascam 424 mkII portastudio. Because the signal-to-noise ratio of cassette tapes wasn't great, you just had to crank the level to tape to get the audio above the noise floor. You soon realise that running the level hot to the tape sounds best and gives you some natural compression/limiting. I think there is a LOT of mileage to the 'clipping' method. Maybe try some channel-strips on the master bus and just crank the level. You will also get some 'sweetening' depending on the type of console plugin you're using.
I've been mixing audio in some capacity or another for 25 years. I've mostly done arena level live sound for that, but often have to make mixes of shows. I'm shocked that I have never known of this clipping technique - and now that I've seen this demonstration it makes complete sense. Never again will I use a limiter for loudness.
When I see you talking about clipping am so happy,clipping is the most underrated part of mixing but clipping,saturation,is key to reduce the Crest factor/dynamic range of a signal,hence increasing RMS where the percieved loudness lies. Newfangled audio elevate is the mastering limiter I recommend is so great cuase I has a cliper at the end that you can completely control it's a game changer!!!.
I've been doing this all my life, sending the mix through a Behringer console and clipping back in the DAW. For hard genres like metal, rock, dubstep, this can work like a charm. Nothing makes a kick drum hit hard as a clipper
Sorry, can you clear something up for me? So on the way back in are you still keeping the drums' actual db around the same? IE in the mix stage you've got the drums at say like -6db, route out to Console for clip then back in around -6db?
I misused compression so much in the past (noob problem). Clipping is great. The cleanest solution there is. I also backed down on saturation. Compression makes sense to glue several items together, or to shape the snare. Nowadays I am very careful with compression.
i used to and still sorta have this problem. I clip on specific things, usually drums. Usually use the mpc and gain up the drums in there. or clip it in ableton. I still struggle at times with compression, but ive been using it way way less over the years...
Getting a louder mix is down to proper eq work and distortion on the individual tracks well before hitting the limiters. No need to clip. You should have no issues getting a mix as hot as -6 LUFs without clipping. If there is proper bus compression the transients don't get lost. Don't clip, use high quality distortion plugins, it will sound better.
Depending on what 'distortion' you are talking about. You ARE clipping things, be it hard or soft clipping that comes with the added benefit of a specific kind of distortion. Clipping is used all the time on every professional mix/master out there.
Haha yesss a few years ago Andreas stayed at my studio to help work on a record and I saw him do this and it changed my life! He’s a great engineer/producer.
Hey i love the amount of lower resonance on that snare. Tone is on point! Seeing too many people EQ ing that resonance out and I just love that part of the snare frequency.
Oh dude you just solved a major problem I had for sure. I clipped on my 8 track and I though it sounded better, but i couldnt find a clear answer to what that did to the audio. Thanks.
Are we not gonna talk how cool that guitar/solo riff is?😎🤘 Great video as always. Been dong this for years first by accident, then secretly leaving here and there as it sounded great and later more deliberately, awesome to hear from other engineers that it's not a "sin".🤙
Another loudness technique is to use saturation, of course; everyone knows that. But I'm not sure everyone knows about sonnox inflator. It is another way to push up RMS to reduce the crest factor (which allows a limiter to achieve more level boost without destroying transients).
Love to see it. I've been using Logic's Bit Crusher on clip mode to do this very thing for almost ten years. Used to think it was a dodgy approach! Finally just trusted myself, and my happy clients. I've seen some of the 'bigger' mastering studios like sterling do this by clipping at the AD/DA converters when they print. Pretty cool. However you manage to clip your signal, as always, if it sounds good IT IS good.
The AD/DA makes tons of sense! Before this era where everyone can mess around with digital versions of rack gear, people were probably wondering how mixes got so "pushed" without getting into clipping. Turns out, they were clipping the whole time!
Love this! I am new to audio but noticed how incredible things sounded the other day when I boosted my preamps. I noted the clipping and backed off. Planning to get back there and play around some more now that I’ve been given some “professional latitude”. Thanks!
I appreciate these videos. It’s rare you hear controversial advice such as this. One of the best pieces of advice I keep coming back to is “don’t be precious with audio.” Also, that EQ is just + and - ‘s
I really like GClip. It has a simple soft clip option, and the visuals are very clear with an amplitude over time graph so you can really easily see what you've been clipping off. Best of all it's free.
Kazrog K clip 3 is an awesome clipper. resizable with great metering and has volume match to hear exactly what its doing. I've tried several clippers and this one worked best for me.
I wish I have seen clipping on purpose tutorials 10 years ago. All of a sudden I don't try to push drum with every possible tool to squeeze a little bit more out of it. Sometimes I need to take back! It saves a ton of time and effort and frustration.
Question, don't most daws use a 32 bit float system meaning you can clip without any distortion on playback and only hear the distortion after you bounce a file to a 24 or 16 bit file? Meaning the way you're doing it while it may work, there's no way to hear how much distortion there is during playback until you export or bounce the track?
This is true, in Logic Pro i would get this issue a lot but using Reason i never have an issue, not sure if it has the same system but when I bounce i always get what i heard in playback
I've absolutely noticed this effect! I've always hesititated to used this method though. Why? Fear! I totally thank this channel for giving me a bit of courage!
@@jowlorenz9555 no, I don’t think it does, no. It’s just than when you push a channel into the red it often sounds better than pushing into a limiter! That’s all we’re talking about really. And some plugins can mimic this effect!
This is a great trick. Submission Audio has an amazing limiter that has the same effect. it doesn't destroy your drum transients, and at the same time, it gives you the loudness you need. This is just a cheaper way to do so and I absolutely love it.
If your are on 32 float and above. It doesn’t matter. As long as that converted master bus is not peaking you. Good. I usually do a small amount of clipping on each drum track and some on the bass. By the time it get to the clipper on the Master buss. The loudness is mostly there.
Great tutorial! Been using Ik Multimedia's Soft Clipper for a while, it does some magic on master bus. But realize now i should probably replace alot of brickwall limiting with clipping!
Venn audio has Freeclip that's probably what you meant by not having a proper user interface. But it's free and I think it sounds great! Thanks for this great video.
Be. Careful. ... if you're just sending a reference mix, then fine. If you are sending this to mastering, nope nope nope. The only reason he isn't getting digital clipping (the really bad sound) in the first example is b/c Pro Tools is running internally at 32-bit float. As soon as this gets mixed down to 24-Bit or 16-Bit, there will be digital artifacts that can't be undone. In the example of the Waves L2 - most of the issues he is having is from using it with the noise-shaping turned on as well as dither (noise). You can use a different limiter (like the FabFilter ProL-2 for example) and have way more control over the attack/release etc. and get much better results. Clipping is an art, and is very useful, but this use of it is not going to work when sending to a mastering house.
Been using the kazrog clip for a while. Turns out I could’ve just used a trim this whole time lol. The kazrog is still probably the best clipper I’ve heard though
It's funny how the internet is FLOATING with tips regarding clipping in mastering - I'm by no means professional, but I mix and master my own material for commercial release, and I figured this out years ago. The result is ALWAYS better without a limiter 🔥
Thanks, Jordan! Never used clipping before to my advantage because I never knew how to go about it but I use it all the time to get my mixes louder for the dame reasons you stated and now I know I'm not crazy 👍😃
you have to use clipping with all the plugins hitting all the hot spots otherwise it will sound terrible if you don't isolate the proper frequencies and highlight the transients as good as possible
Guys, SIR Audio StandardCLIP is the best and most versatile Clipper + UI friendly i´ve found yet and it´s only 25$/19€ Hard Clipping + 32x Oversampling on drums or claps is just soooo nice sounding :D
A good clipping plugin? Try standard clip. It has very high-degree oversampling for online and/or offline use, and it has tuneable filters. It's really a great, great clipping plugin. I highly recommend it. You will really want high-degree oversampling for some uses to eliminate aliasing distortion.
FreeClip is what it says on the tin, free, sadly it's not available for Pro Tools. but the thing is it can do a whopping 32x oversampling if you're afraid of aliasing (which isn't really going to be heard if you don't clip really hard anyway). The clipping behavior can only be adjusted in stages instead of percentages.
A couple things. 1- The Waves L2 is possibly the, oldest, shittest limiter still in production (well not in production/being sold). and 2- Inside a 32 bit float point DAW you have extended headroom, so im not surprised it sounds good in this video. however, once you export it... That's going to be another story. Did like the video though, some cool examples. thank you.
That's what I was thinking too. When he said "it sounds exactly like my mix, just louder", I think that's exactly what was happening lol. Unless ProTools and/or the Apogee Duet does something different that I'm not aware of.
trim the master channel...slightly til u stop seeing red on master channel for no clippin after export or clip into a limiter with a high threshold. for his example tho when only the kick clips...the audible distortion sounds like the attack (punch/transient) is enhanced only on the kick, once exported.
The Pro L2 beat out every other clipper & limiter I've ever tried (including Flatline). I can hit -6 LUF's no problem and can even get into -4 / -3 territory when I use two with different configs.
@@christianarnold4154 bro no doubt about it. I have never heard nor will I ever clip my tracks. That is plain stupid. -9Db is the loudest you ever need and Fabfilter Pro L2 will do that no problem.
The voices of reason! Pro L2 is well known to be at the top of the heap. Besides his plugin of choice, he might have failed at limiting because your track has to have everything tucked in, nothing sticking out, before you limit.
clipping plugins are still effective when the client is requesting incredibly loud masters. its more transparent being pushed than pushing the limiter harder. -Kclip 3
Great vid Jordan. Appreciate the info. I've recently been using/experimenting Kclip 3 by Kazrog with the multi band feature on drums. Really enjoying the results with each band having a mix blend feature along with the ability to apply a different style of distortion/clipping to each band as well. I think someone with your skill set could really make great use of something like that, much more than me... Love to know what you think or any tips, take care ✌🏼
Funny how people here say they would never clip anything in there life. Sure limiting works to an extent. But how do you think you'll get a commercially loud, tight and punchy sound like Dealer, alpha wolf or gojira (from Mars to Sirius) without pushing the boundaries. Clip it and rip it, let the loudness flow
I’ve heard before that the big pros literally just clip the hell out of the mixes and that’s why nobody can compete with the loudness because the casual music listener won’t notice the distortion anyway.
Hey Jordan ! I also find it very hard to find a good clipper ! Flatline is very popular but awfully NOT transparent (changes the sound when supposed to be doing nothing, frequency, balance, and image is shifting). The most transparent i've tried is the simple JS Event Horizon Clipper for Reaper. Very simple, very effective, totally transparent (=passes the phase inversion check), but lacks gain reduction metering. Standard Clip is cool with lots of options and can be very transparent but only with very high oversampling values, which is a CPU nightmare when used on many tracks (very good for 20 bucks though). Best one I found is bx_limiter for transparency vs efficiency vs ease of use vs good metering. PLEASE provide us with the ultimate clipper plugin we're all waiting for !! I'll be waiting impatiently... thanks a lot ;-)
Hello I recomend you check out,newfangled audio elavate is the mastering limiter that breaks down everything hidden behind what, brick wall limiters actually do,it has a cliper at the end which you can completely control it's a game changer.
Wow finally someone that’s talking about this. This is exactly what keeps happening to me when I’m mixing down! I’m using PreSonus Studio1824 w/ Behringer Interface… Mixing in Studio One 5 Pro. Question what plug-ins can I use in this program to achieve this, please advise appreciate it. Thank you!
You can either turn on the input gain knobs in the mix window from settings and crank them up or use the Mixtool plugin which is the equivalent of the trim plugin he used in Protools.
@@audio_odyssey hi I appreciate you getting back to me. Yes I do have the Mixtool plug-in I’ll try that. Question when you say I can turn on the gain knobs in the mix window from settings. Are you talking about the final mix down window when I’m in the project page in PreSonus studio one ? I’m using a MacBook laptop. Please advise. Thank you.
@@FairweatherBlues-Band71322, happy to help. No, in the window with all of the faders. On the left side there is a place you can show or hide various functions. Click the wrench and enable the input gain controls by selecting the check box. Once you do that, at the top of each channel there will be a gain control. These can be used to gain stage the volume of your tracks without moving the fader. For clipping you would use these to push the amplitude high enough that the signal goes above 0 dB on the meter and a red light should indicate clipping has occurred. This I the same as doing it with the mix tool, but no plugin is required. Hope that helps.
You're missing the point. It's not about being louder, it's about being as loud as the others. As said several times in the video, bands don't want to sound weaker than others.
@@peteshifter I see, you want to make music for playlists and to be compared with other artists. That makes all that loudness war understandable but that's also probably the reason why I don't like it how the most of the modern music sounds like. I rather listen to music album by album and enjoy sounds made good to sound in context of the whole record - not in context of other music you may listen to. And well, I am 34 yrs old.
I think this is a great topic, two questions if I may ask: Do you have good or bad experience using clippers on parallel drum busses, before and/or after the compression unit? And secondly: How and when to use the oversampling option that some clippers provide? I found that I need to avoid oversampling on parallel tracks, because it causes a slight delay, resulting in a phase shift. Oversampling also often seems to change the sound of the track it's applied to, not just the clipping portion, at least the algorithm of FreeClip, my favourite clipper, does. Is it more advantageous in your opinion to avoid the os option entirely, on submix groups and master tracks, anyone? Cheers :)