In the latest example clipper sounded more "open" while limiter sounded more "squashed". It really depends on the algorithms of each plugin, the audio it applies to and settings such as threshold and etc..
clipiiiiing! i would use limiters more for technical purposes, for containing material, or consolidating it, but musically, on a master, on clean, sterile stuff, clipiiiiiiiiing. you don't have to overdo it, either. love these concise, clear, to the point, yet complete videos.
For me secret for loudness is : balanced mix/ clipping / bus compression / saturation and limiting combined with taste and general producing skills. And it comes with experience. And of course there is meta question : do we still need loud masters in era of normalized loudness on streaming services ? Question is open. But i remember what pensado said about loudness too.
balanced mixes are a thing of the past, the sound changed, n so has everything in the chain you suggested. its really clipping and saturation the out of balanced mixes need...bus compression and limiting impossible...currently.
@Muse Axe Backing Tracks loudness to me is out of balance, well balanced is what would make u need the bus compression n limiting. so u right...but its only cause ur mixes are balanced in the first place, that makes those steps necessary. Jay n Bey different from doja cat n lil baby.
Using a bit of soft clipping before limiting works well. Soft clipping is not too dissimilar to passing a signal through or on to tape, tape smooths out the transients slightly, which is worth noting. So, even out the transients slightly, for greater rms levels, the bring the level up slightly with a finalising brick wall limiter - is a good combo.
@@lxvesick2267 It wouldn't make sense to do that. If you are going to use a clipper it will be to get a higher ceiling level, but then you would need to limit, helping and making sure you don't digital exceed 0. So by softening the transient spikes you can push into the limiter gaining a few db's. You can place a limiter earlier in the chain of levelling things, but clipping in turn, would be to maximise the level in conjunction with the limiter. Otherwise it would defeat the purpose.
I definitely prefer the sound of Clippers; however I utilize both. The end of my chain is the T Racks Clipper which is variable between soft and hard clipping to tame some of the transients before hitting my final limiter, the L1+ set to True Peak. A little bit (or a lot, depending on the song) of both really helps finish off the track.
On acoustic drums, I’m always shocked at the increase in perceived loudness- and decrease in metered dynamic range- when I phase align all the mics. That said, I REALLY loved this quick easy comparison. The limiter was beautifully punchy on the drum track, and I preferred the clipper on the later mix.
This was a great video! I’m a producer trying to learn more on the mixing side and one thing I’ve overlooked was thinking that both limiters and clippers should be used in just the mastering part… I feel like the limiters allow each element to breathe rather than the clipper that just smashes the sound down but I can definitely see uses for both. Thanks!
Great video. For the Infected Mushroom song at the end I actually preferred the limiter. I love extra bite that the clipper gave, but it made the snare sound a hair too loud in this case. I guess it just depends on what kind of sound you're going for in the end. Edit: Sorry, just realized Infected Mushroom is the plugin, not the artist! Sounds killer!
Same thought here! The clipper gave it a more aggressive tone overall but the limiter sounded a little bit cleaner with more room for the drums to breathe
Credit for the dj skills involved in getting those track samples to flow smoothly enough that you had to look at which sound was clipped or limited. The originals stood out without looking though. Great content!
In the last example, Clipper perceives more "punch" and "weight", whereas the Limiter sounded more "squashed" and "distorted". The difference is listening to the Snare.
The clipper made it seem louder but I wouldn't say it necessarily made it punchier. I'm surprised you found the limiting to be excessive, sounded appropriate to me.
There's all this weird dogmas in the audio production field that totally discounts style and tastes. I have a fatty collection of all these tape plugins to make my mixes sound they were done on old.schopl 4 track cassettes or book boxes. While this is extreme and I'm using it almost to convey an era, I do greatly enjoy that 80s/90s demo sound and want even if not always that intense. So just go with what sounds and feels right. But it's good to learn the conservative *clean and proper* way, just so you have it as another tool in your tool chest
It didn't worry these young guys. The console clipping on drums and guitars to out of control!!! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fJ9rUzIMcZQ.html
In your mixing file you have to clip it first before exporting it and use a limiter for the mastering process the dynamics of the song will sound clean/loud
This is relative to the LUFS you are aiming for. If you are mastering for Spotify a limiter should be fine. If you are mastering for CD or Radio, a clipper is better in my opinion. For a LOUD master (Radio or CD) a mastering limiter will always (without fail) push down the transients of the drums. This is very noticeable since the drums sound softer. This is a massive problem if the mastering engineer will use a limiter instead of a clipper. Waves should've given the LUFS of the examples to place things in perspective. An LUFS of -12 vs an LUFS of -8 will make these tests sound totally different.
I actually find clippers to be cleaner if used very conservatively…I use them to cut out those crazy rogue peaks you get in acoustic drums. Limiters in the same context seem to take out the punch, but I love them on basses and electric guitars.
I really like the dialog of this topic it is very subjective but I do wonder why waves and other big plugin makers all didn't rush to the clipping hype. It is a subtle yet interesting sonic journey that I go back and forth with. cheers!
I short, use a clipper for a stem. A limiter for a mix because a clipper can indeed crush the sound and you don't want that on a whole mix except if you have some kind of transparent clipper.
clipping works really well on drums or material that has excessive transients, which eat away precious headroom. you can often clip drums upwards of 4dB worth & still retain punch & the body of the drum, while gaining back extra headroom. even smaller amounts of clipping may not make a huge difference at track-level, but by the time everything is summed together at bus level, you'll find you'll have much more headroom on the master. also, pushing a signal harder through a clipper by adjusting its threshold to find just the right amount, can add that "bite" to the vocal or bass, as the signal pushes past the threshold & clipping begins to occur.
I like a clipper to shave off the tip of a rare occasional spike that usually only happens in a short part of an entire mix, then use the limiter to maximize or tune loudness.
Im not sure what clipper you are referring to but clippers are much "LESS" aggressive of on the edges not "more". For example, most good clippers (Standard clip by SIR Tools) has a knee adjustment allowing you to set the ceilings gradual drop off. Limiters are harsh and in most cases square wave the signal (IE- brickwall).
the info in this video was so clear, accurate and concise! and with great illustrations! I like how you mentioned it all comes down to personal taste. One is never better than another in all cases! 🙏 excellent! Question: Do you think 'on-the-fly' limiters such as the ones you shown have exactly the same result as applying a limiter transformation effect in Audacity (transform with limiter before you playback, then playback)? I feel like limiter-transformed tracks register differently on the meters than on-the-fly limited tracks. 😕 Thank you
Dan ‘Da Man’ Cooper! Another great video. Thank you for the knowledge... I have a better understanding between the two now and can make a more informed choice when mixing, mastering and doing sound design. Also... Thank you Waves, these short and to the point videos are well produced and I find them very enjoyable.
I very offten have the problem when putting Clipper on my master bus before the Limiter for final mastering...the Clipper always makes some minor distortion sounds to the Low end frequency,which i do not like at all .No matter if i use Softclip,i do no like this distiorions,maybe i am doing something wrong,i am not sure.
Correct me here, a clipper can if used properly increase loudness (insanely much if one wants) but keeps very much of the perceived dynamic range? Limiting will finally make the snare (and more) sounding like a pancaked snare, more 2D. Too much limiting also brings up the root notes (sometimes) to be too audible and it all sounds disastrous (also with the most transparent limiting possible, still the gain reduction does too much however transparent it is in all other regards).
Nailed it! I see a clipper as like a transient designer with saturation and distortion to help with the punch. Limiting isn’t always a bad thing, but you definitely don’t want to overdo it where it seems flat or 2D.
@@tylerdengler6960 No it just clips in a better way than clipping on a channel/bus. Clipper is candy on percussion, to a great extent and can even improve the whole sense, then saving the limiting later. So clipper is a great way to keep the dynamic range but still increase loudness.
@@Quant-Beat distortion means to reshape something and by clipping the peaks, you’re literally reshaping them. Hard clipping turns a sine wave into a square one.
Thank u so much! I thought limites were more like clippers (maybe brickwall's one r Idk lol :,) ...) ! Now my songs seem more squashed and the dynamic range is smaller just like in the professional one's! I love u lol
For me on drum bus we can use a soft clipper for have a best controle on the drum bus but for mastering the limiter stay the best tool ,after for house music or danse we can use a soft clipper and after a limiter for have the best controle of the dynamic of the sound It's an option to !!!!
In the last comparison I liked the punch from the clipper, however I liked the clean sound from the limiter as well, and I would probably choose limiter in this situation based on my above perceptions for the best scenario to have the cleanest translation across other devices than what I'm currently hearing it on (earbuds).... Please let me know if anybody has any thoughts based on my own conclusion...🙏🏽💯🙏🏽 I'm only here to keep learning and appreciate any insight
how would one implement clipping on the stems ? let’s say you got all your processing done like for example :eq -compression - maybe saturation then use a clipper last on the stem? like a drum stem and instrument stem ?
I prefer to use a Limiter to preserve and control the transients. Clipping always seems to be too harsh and dulls the track. Of course this is purely subjective as it depends on the audio material, the plugin you use and the settings.
Depends on how much you’re clipping the transients. A soft clipper smoothens out the peaks for more punch, in theory. Think about it like this, a clipper affects signal above the threshold clipping it where the limiter pushes down the peaks to bring up the rest of the signal where too much limiting could also dull out the track.
sorry, but I have never seen a limiter not cutting the peaks as you showed with clippers, maybe a gentle analog one. but I think you must reconsider your examples. analog, digital soft hard?
Clipper quite literally are trading dynamic energy for harmonic content, whereas limiters with a release of 100ms or greater are just raising RMS, and usually are meant to maintain the original harmonic content but just to lessen dynamics.
Limiter - sound field had depth and slight distancing of the elements... fuller sounding...I would judiciously hard clip the drums and finalize with a Mastering Limiter over the hard mixed down track...JMO
I prefer a limiter over a clipper. I don't like the idea of clipping transients. I'd rather squash them a bit, so you can keep the integrity of the peaks.
To be honest, in this example, the Clipper sounded better than the Limiter. I think there's a place for both, though, the Limiter is a "must" in general, while the Clipper is more for specific situations.
saturation is essentially a form of soft clipping, with flavors (EQ curve, pre-distortion frequency emphasis, soft clipping curve, and even subtle compression) to set it apart from general purpose clipping.
Forget about the numbers and rely more on your ears, that's the best approach. Focus on how things sound and how they make you feel instead of relying on numbers because different songs will require different numbers. This is why it's pointless to look at numbers.
You can only train your ears through practice, especially on your own material. That's the best approach and then in time you won't even be able to un-hear the difference. All the best.
@@ryanshreevedrums to add on, you can also listen to the decay of the transients where the clipper seems to have a faster decay and the limiter has a slower decay.
