finally someone that explains what a clipper is

Somehow the youtube algorythm recommended me your channel just in the last couple of days. I've been binge watching since then. Your videos strike the perfect balance between being accessible but with a lot attention to detail. And no snake oil just good information supported by good examples so we can hear for ourselves.

Much less complicated now thanks to these 2 videos you've made on clipping. Thanks again! I've solved the question i raised on your other video on finding the gain meter in RX- the resolution is clearer in this video and can see that you had the de-clip window active and this reveals the meter I couldn't see :-)

Brilliantly clarifies the applications for clippers and limiters, and how they relate to loudness and distortion.

This is other worldly educational content that was needed a very long time ago. Thanks Mr. Panorama Mixing. Will watch every deep dive into a topic you do.

2nd was my fave.

the best advice I got was even in mix-engineering, chain of plugins is all doing different things and that it's important I don't let any one plugin overwork itself. I was only starting out at the time/ toward your formula comparison of clippers and limiters, I believe this was the easiest way for me to understand at the time and look for what he said, since no plugin wears and tears, but that no plugin should do all the work.

Thanks, this is really helpful! It's rare to find somebody on KZfaq who is really knowlegeable about these things.

Editing is really good in this video! And yes a clipper is an essential waveshaper. And if you know some math (and read a bit on the signal processing forums) you can get really close transfer functions of various hardware types. For example germanium diode the transfer function is essentially tanh.

Love your videos. Great way of showing visual examples.

Always excellent! Thank you!

I love your channel. I suggest you try Acustica Ash Ultra clipper. It sounds way more transparent and musical than StandardClip (you can get away with 4db hard clipping on a master), has a new snappy GUI, and very advanced AntiAliasing algorithms. I use both so no bias here, StandardClip in CPU loaded projects, Ash Ultra in mastering sessions.

awesome explanation.

Love the math section, keep doing that! It´s really interesting seeing how plugins actually work (having an idea at least)

Such helpful content! Cheers, Richey

thanx... extremely clear..

Watched it twice to really dig in. Thank you for the examples!

Great explanation!

Always learning insane new levels of detail from you, sir - thank you! I love StandardClip and Event Horizon (keep coming back to this one). I may just go insane trying all these clippers, their parameters, and comparing…

I love Newfangled Saturate. Not sure how it works, but their "Details preservation" setting sounds amazing. I 'think' they may be doing some kind of fold-over distortion to bring the clipped peaks back over into the waveform space (or whatever the technical term is). I like to use transient plugins before going into a hard clipper to enhance the pseudo-transients created by clipping - only a little bit, though. Sharing a little bit of my secret sauce. :)

Perfection!

brother ill remember you for the rest of my life. You are doing gods work here. Thanks

Your educational content is always excellent. You cover some stuff I found from trial and error but you explain why it works too. Thanks very much for posting.

great info!!!

Brilliantly explained. One can still choose off-settings for effect, but knowing the exact function makes for an educated choice. One more method that makes processing smoother is editing rogue peaks in an editor. Well worth the time resulting in a file that has no evil surprises . And then someone comes up and offers that as math for a plug-in. What would that be ... spot-reduction? selective-clipping? smart-clipping?

I've used Standard Clip at times, and it can give good results. Right now I'm using Softube Clipper and Schwabe Gold Clip with a limiter, currently that's SSL X-Limit. Great demo

Great extended explanation! The short explanation is that clippers are GREAT to tame (razor off) fast spikes like transients. So, preferably, percussive instruments. The hardest the clipping, the shortest the razor time. The softest the clipping, the longer de clipping time (considering that it starts earlier, before the threshold value). So it tends to sound better for TONAL instruments. The way shown in the video is way more elaborate and can make us better understand, so be prepared, to put these tools to work properly and not just as "plugin users"... I hope it helps.

Bro I love this stuff

Last one cleanest to my ears

Ear training time😛 The 1st is outshined by the 2nd and the 3rd one. The 2nd one is punchier and has more sheen on the vocal (maybe because it's louder?). The 3rd one is even punchier, and the kick drum sounds "rounder". The vocal seems to have backed off a little bit (less sheen) and the clip feels warmer and darker. Seems like the 3rd clip IS the combination of soft + hard clipping and limiting. Since it sound like a dark song, and the thump feels like it's punching through the singer's and the listeners' heart, my choice would be the 3rd one.

Gods work. Thanks Nicolas. Still trying to understand the soft clip calculation you're doing with the percentage slider, but thats on my non mathematical brain, will get it eventually.

Great video! StandardCLIP is the best, especially when you crank up the oversampling.

this is GOLD

Limiters punch holes in your mix. And sometimes also add a transient softening sound of look-ahead. When the Waves L2 was first released we still preferred moderate clipping.

2nd one was gorgeous

🔥🔥

I chosed the first one .. Just sounds full

Would be cool to see comparison of your AD+ with clip guard vs standardclip or limiting :)

Are you hard clipping AND Soft (logarithmic) clipping at the START of your chain now, using the same instance of StandardCLIP (Like track 3 at 11:22)? If so, do you still use 'regular' soft clipping in addition to this at the end of your chain (before the limiter of course)? EXAMPLE: StandardClip Hard & Soft (logarithmic) > other mastering processing > Ozone Maximizer Soft Clip > Limiter

Soft Clipping sounds good

❤❤❤

Great video!! I just started using a hybrid that does clipping, limiting and a hybrid of both on one setting! Would love to see you test it out! It’s called Flatline 2 by Submission Audio. I heard the tracks on a shitty soundbar so I can’t make a proper assessment! Will do later tn!

Can you do a review of the Gold clipper? 🎉

Hello, what are your thoughts on using UVR5 with the de-noise module to clean up vocals ? do you think I should gainclip vocals then clean them or clean them then gainclip?

Nice video bud

Question: you work primarily in Pro Tools, and thus process audio files through clippers and limiters, but many people work with projects that combine audio and midi triggered material. Besides the challenges of metering accurately at the sample level, I’m curious if using these tools change behavior when dealing with audio information from midi triggered instruments or samplers? Would a clipper’s ability to look ahead and do accurate analysis be compromised for example. An interesting question if nothing else, especially when you consider at least a percentage of your viewers may not be bouncing tracks to audio before mixing. Thoughts?

Have you messed about with Orange Clip yet (or have plans to)?

Great video. I'm still not understanding how you're calculating the settings on StandardClip with the Soft-Clip Saturator. This seems a bit different from your previous video. Perhaps a more thorough explanation of the process in StandardClip... and a little slower, please?

Hi really good video. I have a quick question when I'm mixing my vocals with all the instrumental stems my stems are most of the times at -7db and my vocals are -9db peak, should i route all the stems to a separate channel and use a clipper before going to the master? or Is better to use a clipper in the master with all the vocals? I only clip about -1.6 most of the times.

you are moving nicely with the clipping subject, waiting for you to touch on the smashing the clipper hard for color without sounding like you smashing the clipper hard subject next. It's how EDM, Techno Mastering Engineer prepare the track for that purpose, one being using expansion to re-create the peak just to smash it all dead so you can get the best out of the clipper. Luca Pretolesi style. I believe he talked about it with you in the videos. It works alright, but just want to know the science behind it. One more thing, Techno Mastering Engineer like Robert Babicz I noticed didn't use any limiter at all in one of his video series, just stacking up 3 compressors on slow settings and finally smashing the converter super hard, around 6db GR! It's just the result has close to no distortion at all, no pumping, stupid loud and still sounds amazing. Is it technically possible in digital domain ? I don't know any clipper plugin that can handle 6db of an already dense mix without distorting like crazy. Off topic but have you geek out on the TBTech Cenozoix plugin ? it has some cool transient handling features called Clamp and De-Click, I found it useful sometimes, want to know your takes on it.

hey man, one question, do compressors and limiters reduce only the part of the waveform that exceeds the threshold? or do they reduce the entire wave that surpasses it?

The last one sounded round , the first was with more HF harmonics and the middle was , the middle of the other two

I hard clipp my stems (vocals, music, and fx) musically and then I throw a limiter that has a soft clipper in it something like the frontier limiter, and let's go to mastering

what are your thoughts on goldclip?

Have you used Kazrog's Kclip? If so, what do you think about that plugin?

Nick, do you outsource the Editing? I imagine you would have to with your schedule, and the editor would have to understand the source material to get all the most important parts.

Should the mixer have clipped the claps before sending for mastering ?.

What headphones do you use?

So, soft clip pro at "min" setting is a hard clipper?

Just at the start, middle one feels like it's clipped only and a bit brighter then the rest, and top one I would guess clip+limit combo... Grabing popcorns now and getting ready to be completely wrong xD...

I don't own RX... Which module was that, for looking at the peaks?

2 nd one was best.

1st verson

are saturators different from soft clippers?

1:05 I've used quite a few clippers, but I don't understand this second point at all. What is minus threshold in this case? I get that the clipper cuts off the peaks above threshold as the point 1 states, I get that the clipper does nothing to the values bellow the threshold as is stated in point 3, but what's happening in the "Else if" point in between? I thought it might be just the case of threshold being lowered into the -xx levels, but then the video states that the value is set to the -threshold levels if the sample is "bellow" the -threshold level and that makes it quite confusing for me. Hard clipper does nothing to samples that are bellow the threshold but changes values of samples that are bellow -threshold? How? What is the difference between threshold and -threshold?

After the "mutual" listen to the resonance on the breath

2nd sounded best to these ears

The second one. The first was too dynamic & the last one sounded too distorted, almost like a hard clip, especially audible on the last kicks

Barely audible but nr 2 took it

Every level trimmed digital limiter with bypassed dynamics is a clipper... ?

Excellent, excellent, excellent.

1,3 - clippers, 2 - limiter

#2 is more open(a bit too mash brightness), #1 more balanced, #3 did not like

gotta use them in parallel

Original/clipped/limiter.

Congratulations, the title "Clippers... it's complicated" baited me into clicking, so here I am solely to comment that "No... they're absolutely not." XD

A = a bit steril B = sounded the best more body C= to much 125 to 250 hertz

i don't think i'd be able to engineer stuff with cursive singing lol

2nd

Sounds like the bass is side-chained and ducking in the mix to me? Could just be shitty YT audio though ;)

2 is the loudest, so it sound best to me

Do not oversample the clipper or limiter if you want the detection circuit accurate detect sample peak level

Your microphone is always weirdly sounding. :D But I love you videos. It's a love hate relationship.

bro i have no idea what u talking about 😢

All three snippets essentially sounded the same

Obviously this guy is lying

Sorry, But very confusing and on all ends wrong Explained Information and totally wrong executed tasks! You are using HARD Clipping and SOFT Clipping totally wrong and it appears like you haven´t read the Menu! Or YOU just use the Words Hard / Soft Clipping interchangeably. First Problem: The Free Clip Plugin you are using is NOT a HARD CLIPPING PLUGIN at All! It has a "Hard Clipp" MODE, BUT this mode is still SOFT CLIPPED! Your Signal is Not HARD Cutted! Means: You are Still getting very much Distortion from this Mode. Because the whole Plugin is in its entirety just a SOFT CLIPPING PLUGIN! Second Problem: From Minute 3:50 in Your Video to the End you are testing "HARD CLIPPING." NO YOU ARE NOT! YOU DIDN`T turn ON the HARD Clipping MODE at ALL! You were just experimenting the whole Video with the Soft Clipping Mode from the PLUGIN. So the Only thing you did was basically compare the different Soft Clipping Modes in terms of Saturation. Conclusion: Guys its not thaaat complicated. I talked to the Standard Clip Inventor here in Germany @ Berlin. But You can also read all Information about this in the Menu. CLIPPING is not a new Topic. Its is an old technic that was used on analog times and now its also standard in digital times. BUT Somehow it became in KZfaq a new Hype like it would be something New and very Complicated Topic. It is not ! In a nutshell: HARD CLIPPING, - Cuts the audio at the clipping level WITHOUT soft-saturation. This is often used to trim a few peaks from the signal before it enters a limiter, for more transparent limiting. SOFT CLIPPING, Clips the audio with different Clipping Curves and you will get a clipped Signal with more Saturation. If you wanna use SOFT or HARD Clipping depends on your Style of Music. Soft Clipping is perfect for EDM because of the Saturation. For a Ballade probably HARD CLIPPING could fit better. --> NO or way less Saturation. But sorry @panorama_mastering you miss Used those Plug Ins and then you miss explained what you were doing, assuming you were in the right SOFT OR HARD CLIPPING Mode. If you wanna HARD CLIPP your Stuff you have to enable the HARD CLIPPING MODE in the Standard Clip PLUG IN.