TDR Molot GE does an incredible job on diminishing the crest factor, whilst still sounding very close, at least for transients. Also, thank you for these videos, they're very eye-opening and made me rethink several segments of this strategy.
i am and afrobeat producer.. but this clip to zero method is really changing my game sir am supper great full keep it......this course is surpost to be in markets waooo but is free
Great series! It's funny, I've been doing a lot of stuff like this already subconsciously and from experience, but seeing this all in a coherent and well-explained manner gives me an even better understanding of what I am doing with my music.
You’ve helped me with mixing so much, it’s like have a mentor. Thank you for telling the truth to people who are willing to listen. Instead of making vids like “HOW TO GET CRISPY VOCALS” 🔥🔥😂
Simply fantastic tutorial series. Even if you don’t want to push things to maximum levels this knowledge is great for your overall production skills and end result.
I discovered spectre through your channel and without a doubt its worth every penny. I use it heavily now. It is excellent of increasing the perceived loudness of mid range basses, synths, kick and snares. Its super amazing on kicks and snare as it doesn't screw up the phases in the transient. Could not recommend it enough, I consider it an essential tool now regardless of genre.
I've been using CTZ for the last 6 months or so, been using it on everything, but I've skipping this step! Note to self - saturate first and check the crest factor change in dbMeter... Edit - I just made a beat and did this step properly for the first time - wow, night and day difference! Able to get my mix soooo much louder, it's making every other mix I've made sound weak. I finally feel like I understand the point of saturation. Baphometrix, salute 👊
What a great series. Thanks man. The detailed explanation on NY saturation blew my mind. Never used it because I did not like the sound but now I know why.
i actually love the sound on drums if i want them to sound really massive pumping industrial sounding. just the snare and hi hats, and percussive elements though, i wouldn't put pads, delicate sounds or anything with a lot of harmonics it'll just sound like a bucket of hammered arseholes.
When I started producing I 'got' compression on a theoretical level, but I sucked at applying it and I didn't know what I was doing (I've since learned to trust my ears, but I used to suck at trusting them early on). But early on already, I've read about producers like Dom & Roland eschewing usng compressors because they felt like saturation (I think he used it in the broadest sense of the word, or he just said distortion, can't remember) does a much better job at dynamic processing. And in my own production, I've learned that "saturation into saturation" gave me incredibly good results in terms of dynamic reduction, loudness and overall sound without sounding harsh, way before I'm even at the mixing stage. To this day, I RARELY use a compressor. A lot of my practices feel vindicated by your video series, but I've also learned some new approaches. Thank you.
Yep, I almost never use a compressor except early in the raw sound design to **sharpen** the transient feel of a sound or to increase the **punch** of a sound.
How would you suppose ableton’s stock saturator compares to some of these or other 3rd party options? I now worry my saturator (ableton’s) may be inadequate for achieving loudness at my target range of ~5 LUFS.
Also, been interested in Spectre since I watched your video about frequency-sidechaining and as someone who hates using EQ for boosts, I'm seriously considering buying it. I'm a little confused about the mix knob on it. So, at 50%, half the signal coming out of the plugin would be the original and the other half the newly saturated signal, correct?
Abletons' stock saturator is great. But don't stop there. Overdrive is great too. So are a lot of their cabinets. The Bass cabinet is also a really good coloring saturator, for example. Basicially, color the heck out of everything with any type of saturation/distortion FX you have.
There is also a very nice project: Chow Tape model. It's an emulation of a Sony Tc 260. Up to 16x oversampling, highly configurable..to me sounds excellent. Free. Give it a look. Your opinion on that is welcome.
Tight glad to see another episode already youre pumping these out last few days time to get the baphometrix notepad out class is in session. So far this method has been working great for me definitely makes the loudness process a lot less of a headache. Was wondering what kind of tracks you bring the Limitless plug out for considering you mentioned its your favorite limiter. Thanks for these vids theyre amongst the best material around youtube/net! 👌
Wow I just did a side by side comparison with Spectre on kick preset vs Pro 3 with exact same settings and spectre sounds so much cleaner. Crazyyyyy, gonna have to remember to reach for it when doing EQ boosts but damnnn this is major
I admit I was one of those guys that clipped each sound coming out of serum. But since i experienced harshness from certain sounds, I took the hard clipper off altogether on the individual tracks and synth bus. Thanks for clearing that up teach. I'll try using waves vitamin, waves abbey roads saturator, waves j37 tape, ozone 9 Exciter and gclip soft clipper (only saturation plugins I have) to lower the crest factor and THEN add the hard clipper. ✌️
10:45 ish bit confused how a wave form of time domain on axis X could go on amplitude domain on axis Y could go into “negative zero”. The zero is in the middle and then we go Ymax (up) or Ymin (down) … what am I missing? Thanks
nice, I wish I had found this earlier because I wasted a lot of time trying to understand when to use soft clipping, hard clipping, saturation and distortion. I can't wait to see the rest. Most of the time I would just compress to try to get things louder
Thank you. Not for the bad words, but this vídeo was cool! About NY compressor, I think that a case of some did it, the result was great and they thought that the parallel compression should work for every program and material. Oh, sugar tastes good, so let's put it on meat, veggies, ... This method, like you've said, brings up all the under the floor to the tables level, but I think that clippers and limiters does it, too. But they do that a lot more gently... :-) A lot smoother, like you've said. That's the way they make things apesar to be Lauder, right? Less peaks, the "caterpilar" become bigger, thick, closer to where those peaks were hitting...
Would Waves Vitamin be something similar to Spectre since it's a multiband harmonic enhancer. I just started utilizing it in my beats about 3 days ago. Pretty ironic lol
Maybe? It's been a long time since I looked at Vitamin. Saturn also has multiband capabilities and the ability to do a dry/wet mix with the original signal. The big question is whether Vitamin uses Linkwitz-Reilly filters to separate the bands. (Because that will very much change the shape of the original signal even with no saturation applied to any band.) Spectre is unique. It doesn't put the signal through a bunch of band split crossover filters. It simply creates the saturated harmonics on a separate channel and then morphs those harmonics into the original dry signal. Look for another comment here that somebody made about Saturn and I give a more complete answer there.
Wow, everything I've learned from other sources, so far, is completely the opposite of what you're teaching. I wasn't buying into the CTZ method until I started fiddling with some clippers using your approach. Your 5 episodes of CTZ is worth more than any course I had paid for.
I’m not sure what other sources you are using.. but you can get much cleaner and equally loud mixes by addressing masking properly, only using saturation on a few parts, and NOT clipping. These videos are well made… but there is a lot of bad advice.. a lot! The harshness at 2k is because he is trying to compensate for masking issues from clipping and saturating.. every move is creating a new problem that needs to be addressed .. so it’s compensated by trying to add or take something away.
@@djcolinturnbull You're right. I'm not aiming for extreme loudness anyway, but if there's one thing I've learned from the CTZ series, it's that I shouldn't really worry about using clippers on individuals tracks with pokey transients. Some mixing engineers make it sound as if it's taboo to slap limiters/clippers on mixing tracks/busses. I'm trying to get the best of both worlds by using the traditional way of mixing, and some of Baphy's approach on clippers & waveforms.
Adding to the list, some amazing saturators I know of involve GSatPlus and Initial Clipper. They are both free, as of 2022, and both have clip protection. GSatPlus is one of the most friendliest CPU ones I know of, whereas Initial Clipper is significantly heavier.
Watch out on VTM it suffers from pre-ringing. That may be not the issue on tonal stuff, but on transient stuff (especially sharp, short kicks) and I would say staccato stuff you can easily check, it adds a ring as a linear eq would do prior the transient hit.
very good video using fabfilter saturn 2 in multi mode delivers the results of spectre i wonder why he did not try that with saturn 2 , people who have saturn can use it and dont get tempted to buy sprectre
That's exactly what I was thinking, as the owner of saturn 2. At first I thought that specter can mix a saturated and original signal, but actually.. haha saturn can do it too, even for each specific band separately. I just had to look because I've never used this option before. However, if I add to that all the great distortion modes that saturn has, I don't take specter as a thing at all. maybe cpu load but i don't know.
Incorrect. Multi-band is different to parallel. However, you are right in saying Saturn 2 can deliver similar results as it does have a dry wet control for wide band parallel saturation and also for individual bands, so it does do the same thing as Spectre, minus the ability to use a bell curve to target which frequency region you want to saturate.
@@djvoid1 iNcOrReCt. Ofc it's different. nobody sayin it's the same. Bell curve.. like ok, that can be useful, in my opinion not very useful. On the other hand as I sayd... With Saturn you can adjust mix of each individual band + you can have different type of saturation or distortion on each band.
@@fkuchticek You can set different types of saturation for each band in Spectre also (Tube, warm tube, solid, tape, diode, class B, bit, digital, rectify and half rectify). You've actually pointed out a shortcoming of Spectre in that there's only one dry/wet control for everything, rather than Saturn 2 having individual dry/wet for each band. You can blend to your liking, but seeing as the harder you push each band, the more distortion and level you get, this could prove annoying when working with multiple bands of which you want to push different amounts (say less on the low end)
This episode is fire af to me. I was just using a utility and driving every sound I had into a hard clipper. So if I get it this right, for each individual sound I should start with saturation. I should only hard clip if needed. But on the busses, I should stick with hard clippers because they are more transparent. That seems like what you’re saying the workflow should be.
Hey Nova 🙂 The main point is to clip only as much as you *need* to. Which will be further emphasized and demoed in the next episode 6 about doing the "clip from the top". You don't NEED to put on saturation (and other processing) first. You could just "test" a new sound by clipping it and seeing if it can survive the necessary clipping to fit into a loud mix. But even if you start that way for quick progress while choosing sounds and testing your early composition and arrangement ideas, eventually you want to revisit that sound and ask yourself if it would benefit from other other processing AND some of the saturation techniques I suggest in this episode. Then, AFTER you do that, re-adjust your CTZ pair. You might be able to do even LESS clipping after adding in the saturation/etc. And less clipping is always better. The next video will show this type of iterative workflow.
He does an episode about this somewhere. But most compressors aren’t fast enough to actually affect the initial transient. You need some kind of look ahead time.
Nice one. Also, instead of ProQ 3 if you want some nonlinearity warmth you could also try out FabFilters Volcano 3… it’s like ProQ 3 but you have lots of different filter modes for that extra colour and saturation… seriously try it out . pS.. the mic sounds a tad distorted in this vid
I think that u can do same parrarel multiband saturation boost of specified areas with FAB FILTER SATURN too. Also by tweaking MIX knob to 50 %. + you can saturate speciefied areas by separating areas with "+" , but spectre gives you a better visual wiev of frequency range.
I've been hard clipping on my reggaeton beats lately. Man my beats are much more powerful now and they're more "stable" I don't know how to explain that
Thanks Bapho as always. What about the difference in pusching drive knob, or pusching up input than reducing output by same amount, in Saturate , to achieve the same amount of clipping?
I haven't talked about Saturate yet. That will come in a later episode. The short story is that the Drive knob is just like linear input gain up to +12 on it's slider (halfway across. After that point it does something funky but I can't remember what, exactly.) Basically if your signal is already peaking close to zero, then the Drive knob is fine to use, but try not to push it past +12 drive.
I would love to see you approach this with the new Spectral Plugins that Bitwig recently released. Could I, for example, use split freq and add a saturator to a specific band and end up with a similar result as Spectre?
About Softube's "Saturation Knob", if you update to the latest version they open up some input/output level controls. Probably won't change your opinion on the plug, but it might be a little easier to wrangle
Heh Bapometrix - I am enjoying the vids so thanks very much. Quick question if I do the emphasis/de-emphasis trick that Dan Worrall shows is that the same as using Spectre. I love that trick and get amazing results from it. If I could do that and not spend the $$ then life would be better.
New York compression is fine given the right source. A thick synth arp with reverb already on it is not the best match. It can work great on acoustic instruments; drums are probably the best example. An LA2A/1176 in parallel on vocals is the favorite of many.
Great video, thank you for sharing! Out of curiosity, do you think it is possible to recreate Spectre's effect with stock Bitwig devices? Like an FX layer with first layer being empty = dry, and the second having a bandpass filter with saturation after it.
Another awesome video in this series. When looking at Spectre, what about using Saturn in multiband mode? Isn't that pretty similar. Or if you duplicated two channels, one dry, and one wet with saturn in multiband mode, then mixed the wet one in, would that be the same as Spectre? Just curious on your thoughts.
I think spectre is using a phase inversion to get a copy of only the harmonics being generated from the saturation which is then being blended back with the original. Watch 2L&L's video on this effect which can be done in an Ableton effect rack very easily.
The architecture in Saturn is very different. Spectre doesn't actually put the signal through a typical set of Linkwitz Reilly crossover filters like most "multi-band FX" plugins do. You can test this by putting a square wave through both of them and looking at the output in an oscilloscope. If you put a square wave through Spectre, it's still a perfect square wave on the other side, even at 50/50 mix. (At 100% mix there's no wave at all.) Then grab a node and drag it up and watch how the square wave remains **perfect** but a small wavefolding type of deformation appears in the waveform. Flip to 100% wet and you'll see the shape of the parallel signal that is actually creating that band-focused saturation. Morph between 100% wet to 50% and you'll see how the parallel signal is being **morphed** with the dry square wave. Now try the same thing through Saturn. Set it to 50% dry/wet. Add two band splits (so you have three bands). Put a square wave through it, and watch how the square wave is TOTALLY deformed into something else entirely. This is the problem with most multiband-FX: they completely change the signal running through them. That's perfectly OKAY if your goal is sound design--and you could make the argument that saturation is "sound design" just like I did in my video. 😉 So using Saturn in this way might very well sound great! Don't be afraid to *try* it. But just be aware that Spectre is quite different. Wavesfactory makes some really excellent plugins. Spectre and Quantum are both unique and very pristine and well-built.
Hi! First of all, thanks for your great work! Learning very much from your videos! I scrolled through the comments but could not find anyone mentioning this: you said that EQ messes with the phase of the signal, and that's right but you're using 'Zero Latency' mode in Pro-Q3 which is designed to mimic the behaviour of an analogue EQ. But Pro-Q3 also has linear mode which introduces some latency (which should be compensated for by the DAW anyway) but doesn't alter the phase at all. Do you use this? I guess it could solve at least phasing issues in your EQ demo!
Hey Bapho, your videos for this series are incredibly good again! What somehow gives me a headache: Do I put an EQ (e.g. to cut unnecessary frequencies) BEFORE or AFTER dpMeter5 and level from there to zero Db? Somehow both make sense to me, but do you have some kind of rule? Thanks a lot! OK, in EP 6 at about 42 Min you explain that. Solved ;-)
I would expect hard clipping to be more audible than soft clipping because of the sharp discontinuities in the waveform creating more and nastier harmonics. I take the point that soft clipping affects more of the waveform, but still. I guess it's all about that ratio. Do you just have to be hard clipping a very small part of the waveform to counteract the more dramatic waveshaping that it causes? Also would the feeling of the audio getting warmer/bassier when you clip the signal be due to the harmonics it's creating which emphasize the fundamental?
Hi Baphometrix, thanks for you videos. A question: it's possible use, for "saturating from the bottom", to use multiband pre in KClip instead of others plugin? Thank you
You can certainly try it. If you're using a very soft clipping curve, it will indeed be a type of colored saturation, and limiting it to a specific band will be somewhat similar to what I demonstrate in Spectre or Saturn.
Any tips on making Kick louder? Feel like I keep compromising loudness for a tubby and lifeless kick. Using Oxford inflator, sausage fattener, trying quantum.. thanks for your videos!
I'd love to know your thoughts on Oxford Inflator. It's a waveshaper, but also a clipper, and produces a "saturation"-style effect on audio without producing anything over 0dBFS (if this is desired) and without altering the peaks of a clipped signal. Very interesting plugin, and kind of a "secret weapon" of audio engineers for much of the duration of its life. Thanks for the awesome tutorials!
Inflator is great. I would personally class it as a "saturator" (overall), because you can *hear* the coloration it imparts. But it has been many producers' and engineers' favorite way to get more loudness out of a signal for a long time.
Yes. Saturn is a fine tool. The workflow is different than working in a tool like Spectre (or GodMode), though. The main difference is that Spectre uses crossover filters to chop/segment the spectrum into discrete bands. By contrast, Spectre and GodMode work with bell boost filters that can overlap each other. The results are different.
@@Baphometrix Saturn 2 has multiband saturation-maybe this is still different than Spectre's? I was under the impression that Saturn 2 used crossover filters to partition the signal into discrete bands too. In any event, you can use different saturation on different parts of the spectrum in Saturn 2.
@@ThomasPosen Hmm... Maybe the newer version of Saturn offers a new type of saturation? I admit to not upgrading to the latest version. If so, then yeah, I'm sure Saturn can give you comparable results to Spectre?
hi baph great video. Where should i put the saturator plugin in my sound design mixing chain? before reverb, delay certainly but what about compression?
Processing in front of or behind compressors is always an "it depends" type of decision. My first choice would be **after** the compressor IF you were using the compressor simply to sharpen the transient punch of a signal. Shape first, then saturate for some loudness and beef. But if I were doing the compression in part for hyped upward compression (such as OTT), then I might choose to saturate first and then hype the saturated result. So.... it all depends. 😆
Thanks for this answer. Adding saturation before upward compression is a really good idea! Btw I just bought spectre and tried it out on a piano and a sample. Strangely I am getting a higher crest factor on the dbmeter... I have to do something wrong
@@chooby4670 Saturation does not always create a lower crest factor. A lot depends on what type of signal you're saturating. And in the case of Spectre, it depends on which part of the spectrum you're boosting and by how much.
the difference is that a soft clipper doesnt square off waves in the same way as a hard clipper. a hard clipper will generate an infinite amount of higher harmonics with equal amplitude for the moment a signal exceeds a threshold. the amplitude of these harmonics is related to the amount of signal exceeding the threshhold. a soft clipper will generate infinite harmonics as well however the amplituse of each individual harmonic is related to the order of the harmonic. e.g. a 100 hz soft clipped sine will have harmonics at 300 500 700 900 1100 hz and so on with each harmonic having less volume then the previous. thats why it is much less audible. think of it like a low passed hard clip while the harder the signal goes into the soft clipper the higher the lowpass cut off frequency is gonna be ( the brighter the result will sound and the more dynamic leveling is gonna happen) hope this makes some sense☺️
another analogy would be a compressor infite ratio a hard knee and 0.00 ms of attack and release while soft clipping would be a compressor with 0.00ms attack and release and infinite ratio but with a soft knee, resulting in the signal to never actually reach the infinite compression ratio and attenuation starting at a lower level then the set threshhold while increasing the ratio the harder the signal goes into the compression. while distorting we always trade absolute amplitude of a wave for generating harmonics. hard clip is black white and soft clip allows for a grey gradient in between😊
Hi Baph. Would love your take on Kelvin Tone Shaper. Its not as edm-ish as Spectre but the quality and the saturation models are awesome 👍 it also has a Soft Clipper and some other tricks.
Tone Projects makes really excellent plugins. I use Unisum as my mastering compressor (when I use one at all, lol). I'm sure Kelvin is awesome as a wideband saturator. It's not the same thing as Spectre, though. Think of Spectre more like a "boost EQ that sounds way better than an EQ". If I had a limited budget and didn't have either Spectre or Kelvin, I'd still recommend to grab Spectre first, because it's so **versatile** for mixing and for loudness.
Yes and no. Bottom line is that any band-specific saturation is a useful way to boost the energy/loudness of a specific area of the spectrum. Spectre goes about this differently than Saturn 2 does. But ultimately, if it sounds good, it *is* good.
@@Baphometrix thanks for the answer man, do you offer 1 on 1 lessons? I've never done ctz before and I would just let my master limiter push 15-20db of gain reduction (I started only 2 years ago) and now that I have tried ctz on a few existing projects I got questions, I'm making kind of dubstep but at 90 bpm instead of 140-150
Not really... Their Crest Factor meter is just a visual meter with no numbers, and it's weighted towards the bottom end instead of the entire signal. dpMeter is free; there's no reason not to have it for quick, accurate crest factor measurement.
I also use the eq on saturn bands when I saturate my snares, claps, 808's. Is that bad? Saturating a trap clap or snare can sometime give a harsh sound, so I cut the treble, some lows, etc. Sorry for asking so many questions :/
Hey Baph, I have a genuine question. This is something I've been messing around with over the past two days, but what are your thoughts on Clipping To Zero during the PRODUCTION STAGE?? I make a Melbourne Bounce + Techno kind of genre, very similar to that of Will Sparks, and while referencing his music and trying to get the same LUFs I noticed my songs really started to fall apart when really pushing them to the limit, like distortion in some of the bass frequencies and a few areas with the kick drum. This gave me the idea to try Clipping To Zero from the start, and building the track from the ground up as loud as possible. As a start I sample one of Will's kicks and got mine to sit at the same Peak and RMS value, I then added everything else from there clipping to zero each element thag got added and it gave me by far the cleanest and loudest result I have had so far. What are your thoughts on this and what sort of problems could I potentially face by doing this and what should I look out for? (also, would you ever consider doing 1 on 1 discord sessions to help a viewer out and give feedback?)
@@Baphometrix alright, i've had all the previous episodes playing on my second monitor while working on university stuff, so i obviously missed that part but i'm definitely gonna go back and rewatch it all thoroughly🙏🏼 thanks so much for everything you have shared, absolute game changer for a lot of people i'm sure
Wouldn't spliting the bands with Saturn or ozone exciter essentially be somewhat close to the spectre. Since they have that mix button for each band to blend it in parallel... I assume spectre is on top of the list cuz the ease of use or is there more with spectre then meets the eye?
@@Baphometrix will definitely scroll thru them now, tbh yesterday I picked a wild night time to watch the videos so my fingers were faster then my brain 😅
I added saturation with (newfangled saturation on soft clip plus auto gain on).I am getting lower crest values on every track but I am over 7 db on the master. How do I bring the values down on the Master? I measure with dp meter and getting 6 lufs on the master being 7 db over the master.If I lower all the volumes on the master by 7 db than I see a reading of 13 lufs on the master. How do I get to a lower lufs with saturation? Do you do a mix down before you start ctz method and adjust every track volume?do the crest gained can be added back to the volume track ? confused.spent 4 h in the studio and can't get it
I'm going to be honest, I either baaaaaarely noticed a difference in sound between the original sound and any of the saturated signals, or I didn't notice it at all. I reran through some of the examples with closed eyes multiple times, but I still couldn't tell a difference most of the time. Is there a good resource or practice method to get me better at ear training the differences? Thanks in advance!
Hi man nice job as always my.big questions i got kazrog clip and its for sure.a.different version then yours it has an oversampling knob and i cant get how to turn it off i leave it on 1 and it sould be off until you gonna touch the oversampling knob do you know how it works ? And as you told in your tutorial i tent to use it almost on every track in a traspaent way unless its a sub or a sub bass tht im.not.gonna.clip.at all, I'm not sure about the master if I'm doing right putting a free venus clip at the end before the limiter stage with hard clip 1.5 or 2 db of clipping and setting s post overspampling to 0 x2 i also have tried far more extreme setting and i found on some project gonna sound better with 8x oversampling and 6/7 db hardclipping do you thing its gonna be too much? Squezze out a limiter by reducing 7 db on the master its gonna be terrible but i think 6db of hard clipping sounds good in lots of situation.Help !
I'm not sure what to say. The latest version of KClip is 3.2.4, which hasn't changed or been updated since Feb of last year (2021). I'm using version 3.2.4 in my videos. As you can see, there's no "Oversampling" knob in the GUI. (It's hidden in a settings tab, and yes, you should leave it at 1x, which means NO oversampling.) As for the rest, by all means you can experiment with variations on the techniques, settings, and approach I'm showing you. If your variations seem to work well for you, great!
@@Baphometrix thanx man i was wondering but u make it clear now about 1x i tought it was off on 1x but not sure thanx again ...and when u say to not have a big massive clip.at the end instead of clipping as ctz, what exactly means massive in db just to understand if i do something wrong using ctz on the last stage i already get the right loudness in mixing also before i got to know your strategy but definly better with ctz in terms of overall resault and quicker then i was used too but the last boost on the masterbus it seeems to sound good using ctz also if 7bd its a.lot i never ever im.my life compress or limiting so hard always 1/2 not.more then 4 db of reduction now using ctz i noticed i dont need to.set the threshold more then 0.5/1 db of reduction on the limiter but i hve tried to raise the clip knob at 7 db with Venus on.the mast with oversampling at 8x sounds great do you know what happens i think oversampling before a limiter is crucial and done with a clipper raising the clipper instead of pushin the limiter treeshold has a really huge benefit but this is possible only working with ctZ mixing if you try what im saying or u already done some tests about it lemme know have a wonderful day!
Right I love Spectre for quick stuff but Saturn 2 can pretty much do everything this does and more. It even has envelope controllers for transient control or other modulation.
Yes and no. Spectre's architecture is different. There are other questions here asking about Saturn where I go into more detail about why I tend to reach for Spectre first. But Saturn, Trash, Thermal, Rift, etc. etc. are all very cool too.
@@PuRe_AdDicT Not in the same way as Spectre. To attempt to emulate Spectre with Saturn would require you to increase both the Drive and the Level of a given band in certain proportions that change with more density/volume. All I can say is that I cannot easily make Saturn sound anywhere near as "clean and transparent" as Spectre.
@@Baphometrix I sure appreciate your reply, thanks and subbed! Have you ever considered analog summing? :) I guess it’s a similar concept to how you’re using the plugins.
Baphy going ham with the back to back vids!
TDR Molot GE does an incredible job on diminishing the crest factor, whilst still sounding very close, at least for transients. Also, thank you for these videos, they're very eye-opening and made me rethink several segments of this strategy.
i am and afrobeat producer.. but this clip to zero method is really changing my game sir
am supper great full keep it......this course is surpost to be in markets waooo but is free
Great series! It's funny, I've been doing a lot of stuff like this already subconsciously and from experience, but seeing this all in a coherent and well-explained manner gives me an even better understanding of what I am doing with my music.
Forgot I had Spectre until I saw this vid and started using it. Definitely notice a difference. Gold nuggets in this video!
insanely helpful serious, cheers for putting this together so thoroughly. massively appreciated
Thank you for going in depth with this Baph!
You’ve helped me with mixing so much, it’s like have a mentor. Thank you for telling the truth to people who are willing to listen. Instead of making vids like “HOW TO GET CRISPY VOCALS” 🔥🔥😂
Wow the quality of these lessons is literally better than what I learned in college.. bravo my friend thank you
Simply fantastic tutorial series. Even if you don’t want to push things to maximum levels this knowledge is great for your overall production skills and end result.
I discovered spectre through your channel and without a doubt its worth every penny. I use it heavily now. It is excellent of increasing the perceived loudness of mid range basses, synths, kick and snares. Its super amazing on kicks and snare as it doesn't screw up the phases in the transient. Could not recommend it enough, I consider it an essential tool now regardless of genre.
thank you so much
This series is awesome, thanks very much I'm learning a lot
I've been using CTZ for the last 6 months or so, been using it on everything, but I've skipping this step! Note to self - saturate first and check the crest factor change in dbMeter...
Edit - I just made a beat and did this step properly for the first time - wow, night and day difference! Able to get my mix soooo much louder, it's making every other mix I've made sound weak. I finally feel like I understand the point of saturation. Baphometrix, salute 👊
You're on fire with these videos. Absolutely love it. Thank you so much.
What a great series. Thanks man.
The detailed explanation on NY saturation blew my mind. Never used it because I did not like the sound but now I know why.
i actually love the sound on drums if i want them to sound really massive pumping industrial sounding. just the snare and hi hats, and percussive elements though, i wouldn't put pads, delicate sounds or anything with a lot of harmonics it'll just sound like a bucket of hammered arseholes.
Geddon Baph!!! You've made me re think my approach to production as a whole.
Keep up the good work 🇬🇧
I have learned so much from you. Thank you Baphy!
Duuuude, you always have so much great information. You rock.
Saturated from the bottom now we're here
Saturated from the bottom now the whole team fuckin here
Love it.
I got 99 problems and saturation ain't one
Thoughts on ableton saturator?
When I started producing I 'got' compression on a theoretical level, but I sucked at applying it and I didn't know what I was doing (I've since learned to trust my ears, but I used to suck at trusting them early on). But early on already, I've read about producers like Dom & Roland eschewing usng compressors because they felt like saturation (I think he used it in the broadest sense of the word, or he just said distortion, can't remember) does a much better job at dynamic processing. And in my own production, I've learned that "saturation into saturation" gave me incredibly good results in terms of dynamic reduction, loudness and overall sound without sounding harsh, way before I'm even at the mixing stage. To this day, I RARELY use a compressor. A lot of my practices feel vindicated by your video series, but I've also learned some new approaches. Thank you.
Yep, I almost never use a compressor except early in the raw sound design to **sharpen** the transient feel of a sound or to increase the **punch** of a sound.
Thank you so much for your detailed explanation on all theses topics. It gives me new perspectives and leads me to rethink some routines🌻
Love the way you break down this method. Thank you
Thank you baphy for the amazing, eye-opening content. Much love from Italy ❤
automatic like. great topic as always Bapho. keep up the great job
So good. My brain needs more plugin tips! Love it.
How would you suppose ableton’s stock saturator compares to some of these or other 3rd party options? I now worry my saturator (ableton’s) may be inadequate for achieving loudness at my target range of ~5 LUFS.
...and yes, i'm struggling to hit that target. I'm currently hitting -8 -7ish with mostly stock plugins.
Also, been interested in Spectre since I watched your video about frequency-sidechaining and as someone who hates using EQ for boosts, I'm seriously considering buying it. I'm a little confused about the mix knob on it. So, at 50%, half the signal coming out of the plugin would be the original and the other half the newly saturated signal, correct?
Abletons' stock saturator is great. But don't stop there. Overdrive is great too. So are a lot of their cabinets. The Bass cabinet is also a really good coloring saturator, for example. Basicially, color the heck out of everything with any type of saturation/distortion FX you have.
Love this channel
Can I use Fabfilter Saturn the same way as Spectre? Setting it to 50% and using its multi band function? Thanks
Been waiting for this one!
There is also a very nice project: Chow Tape model. It's an emulation of a Sony Tc 260. Up to 16x oversampling, highly configurable..to me sounds excellent. Free. Give it a look. Your opinion on that is welcome.
It would be great to get a video about aliasing and oversampling as well! Digging these uploads, you’re doing a killer job!
Tight glad to see another episode already youre pumping these out last few days time to get the baphometrix notepad out class is in session. So far this method has been working great for me definitely makes the loudness process a lot less of a headache.
Was wondering what kind of tracks you bring the Limitless plug out for considering you mentioned its your favorite limiter.
Thanks for these vids theyre amongst the best material around youtube/net! 👌
Wow I just did a side by side comparison with Spectre on kick preset vs Pro 3 with exact same settings and spectre sounds so much cleaner. Crazyyyyy, gonna have to remember to reach for it when doing EQ boosts but damnnn this is major
Wow..🤯🔥
I admit I was one of those guys that clipped each sound coming out of serum. But since i experienced harshness from certain sounds, I took the hard clipper off altogether on the individual tracks and synth bus. Thanks for clearing that up teach. I'll try using waves vitamin, waves abbey roads saturator, waves j37 tape, ozone 9 Exciter and gclip soft clipper (only saturation plugins I have) to lower the crest factor and THEN add the hard clipper. ✌️
10:45 ish bit confused how a wave form of time domain on axis X could go on amplitude domain on axis Y could go into “negative zero”. The zero is in the middle and then we go Ymax (up) or Ymin (down) … what am I missing? Thanks
You are an absolute don 🔥 thanks for all your work.
nice, I wish I had found this earlier because I wasted a lot of time trying to understand when to use soft clipping, hard clipping, saturation and distortion.
I can't wait to see the rest. Most of the time I would just compress to try to get things louder
Dope video, mind blown.
Get this person on mix with the masters!!!
Woman
Whoops! Edited my comment appropriately thanks for the heads up. :) @@sword-and-shield
Thank you.
Not for the bad words, but this vídeo was cool!
About NY compressor, I think that a case of some did it, the result was great and they thought that the parallel compression should work for every program and material.
Oh, sugar tastes good, so let's put it on meat, veggies, ...
This method, like you've said, brings up all the under the floor to the tables level, but I think that clippers and limiters does it, too. But they do that a lot more gently... :-)
A lot smoother, like you've said.
That's the way they make things apesar to be Lauder, right?
Less peaks, the "caterpilar" become bigger, thick, closer to where those peaks were hitting...
"That little crappy thin thing coming out of serum" lmao xD
Would Waves Vitamin be something similar to Spectre since it's a multiband harmonic enhancer. I just started utilizing it in my beats about 3 days ago. Pretty ironic lol
Maybe? It's been a long time since I looked at Vitamin. Saturn also has multiband capabilities and the ability to do a dry/wet mix with the original signal. The big question is whether Vitamin uses Linkwitz-Reilly filters to separate the bands. (Because that will very much change the shape of the original signal even with no saturation applied to any band.) Spectre is unique. It doesn't put the signal through a bunch of band split crossover filters. It simply creates the saturated harmonics on a separate channel and then morphs those harmonics into the original dry signal. Look for another comment here that somebody made about Saturn and I give a more complete answer there.
i was just thinking the same thing
Wow, everything I've learned from other sources, so far, is completely the opposite of what you're teaching. I wasn't buying into the CTZ method until I started fiddling with some clippers using your approach. Your 5 episodes of CTZ is worth more than any course I had paid for.
I’m not sure what other sources you are using.. but you can get much cleaner and equally loud mixes by addressing masking properly, only using saturation on a few parts, and NOT clipping. These videos are well made… but there is a lot of bad advice.. a lot! The harshness at 2k is because he is trying to compensate for masking issues from clipping and saturating.. every move is creating a new problem that needs to be addressed .. so it’s compensated by trying to add or take something away.
@@djcolinturnbull You're right. I'm not aiming for extreme loudness anyway, but if there's one thing I've learned from the CTZ series, it's that I shouldn't really worry about using clippers on individuals tracks with pokey transients. Some mixing engineers make it sound as if it's taboo to slap limiters/clippers on mixing tracks/busses. I'm trying to get the best of both worlds by using the traditional way of mixing, and some of Baphy's approach on clippers & waveforms.
Dude this is so fire. Thank you.
A tip I heard.. Use a reference track of a similiar style to see what the crest factor is and work towards that value.
Adding to the list, some amazing saturators I know of involve GSatPlus and Initial Clipper. They are both free, as of 2022, and both have clip protection. GSatPlus is one of the most friendliest CPU ones I know of, whereas Initial Clipper is significantly heavier.
Watch out on VTM it suffers from pre-ringing. That may be not the issue on tonal stuff, but on transient stuff (especially sharp, short kicks) and I would say staccato stuff you can easily check, it adds a ring as a linear eq would do prior the transient hit.
Good to know/be aware of.
very good video
using fabfilter saturn 2 in multi mode delivers the results of spectre i wonder why he did not try that with saturn 2 , people who have saturn can use it and dont get tempted to buy sprectre
That's exactly what I was thinking, as the owner of saturn 2. At first I thought that specter can mix a saturated and original signal, but actually.. haha saturn can do it too, even for each specific band separately. I just had to look because I've never used this option before. However, if I add to that all the great distortion modes that saturn has, I don't take specter as a thing at all. maybe cpu load but i don't know.
Incorrect. Multi-band is different to parallel. However, you are right in saying Saturn 2 can deliver similar results as it does have a dry wet control for wide band parallel saturation and also for individual bands, so it does do the same thing as Spectre, minus the ability to use a bell curve to target which frequency region you want to saturate.
@@djvoid1 iNcOrReCt. Ofc it's different. nobody sayin it's the same. Bell curve.. like ok, that can be useful, in my opinion not very useful. On the other hand as I sayd... With Saturn you can adjust mix of each individual band + you can have different type of saturation or distortion on each band.
@@fkuchticek You can set different types of saturation for each band in Spectre also (Tube, warm tube, solid, tape, diode, class B, bit, digital, rectify and half rectify). You've actually pointed out a shortcoming of Spectre in that there's only one dry/wet control for everything, rather than Saturn 2 having individual dry/wet for each band. You can blend to your liking, but seeing as the harder you push each band, the more distortion and level you get, this could prove annoying when working with multiple bands of which you want to push different amounts (say less on the low end)
This video was made two years ago, right before Saturn 2 was released.
This episode is fire af to me. I was just using a utility and driving every sound I had into a hard clipper.
So if I get it this right, for each individual sound I should start with saturation. I should only hard clip if needed. But on the busses, I should stick with hard clippers because they are more transparent. That seems like what you’re saying the workflow should be.
Hey Nova 🙂 The main point is to clip only as much as you *need* to. Which will be further emphasized and demoed in the next episode 6 about doing the "clip from the top". You don't NEED to put on saturation (and other processing) first. You could just "test" a new sound by clipping it and seeing if it can survive the necessary clipping to fit into a loud mix. But even if you start that way for quick progress while choosing sounds and testing your early composition and arrangement ideas, eventually you want to revisit that sound and ask yourself if it would benefit from other other processing AND some of the saturation techniques I suggest in this episode. Then, AFTER you do that, re-adjust your CTZ pair. You might be able to do even LESS clipping after adding in the saturation/etc. And less clipping is always better. The next video will show this type of iterative workflow.
just to get this question asked: Isn´t reducing the crest factor exactly the job of an compressor?
He does an episode about this somewhere. But most compressors aren’t fast enough to actually affect the initial transient. You need some kind of look ahead time.
Baphometrix is a woman
Nice one. Also, instead of ProQ 3 if you want some nonlinearity warmth you could also try out FabFilters Volcano 3… it’s like ProQ 3 but you have lots of different filter modes for that extra colour and saturation… seriously try it out . pS.. the mic sounds a tad distorted in this vid
I think that u can do same parrarel multiband saturation boost of specified areas with FAB FILTER SATURN too. Also by tweaking MIX knob to 50 %. + you can saturate speciefied areas by separating areas with "+" , but spectre gives you a better visual wiev of frequency range.
I've been hard clipping on my reggaeton beats lately. Man my beats are much more powerful now and they're more "stable" I don't know how to explain that
Thanks Bapho as always. What about the difference in pusching drive knob, or pusching up input than reducing output by same amount, in Saturate , to achieve the same amount of clipping?
I haven't talked about Saturate yet. That will come in a later episode. The short story is that the Drive knob is just like linear input gain up to +12 on it's slider (halfway across. After that point it does something funky but I can't remember what, exactly.) Basically if your signal is already peaking close to zero, then the Drive knob is fine to use, but try not to push it past +12 drive.
I would love to see you approach this with the new Spectral Plugins that Bitwig recently released. Could I, for example, use split freq and add a saturator to a specific band and end up with a similar result as Spectre?
So are you suggesting saturation before eq and compression? Or after eq and compression and as as long as it’s before clipping?
About Softube's "Saturation Knob", if you update to the latest version they open up some input/output level controls. Probably won't change your opinion on the plug, but it might be a little easier to wrangle
I am using Kclip for both saturating from the bottom (soft clipping) and clipping from the top (hard), and I am having good results.
Heh Bapometrix - I am enjoying the vids so thanks very much. Quick question if I do the emphasis/de-emphasis trick that Dan Worrall shows is that the same as using Spectre. I love that trick and get amazing results from it. If I could do that and not spend the $$ then life would be better.
Catch me in the honk range
made my day a year later thanks
New York compression is fine given the right source. A thick synth arp with reverb already on it is not the best match. It can work great on acoustic instruments; drums are probably the best example. An LA2A/1176 in parallel on vocals is the favorite of many.
So good, Thank You!
Great video, thank you for sharing!
Out of curiosity, do you think it is possible to recreate Spectre's effect with stock Bitwig devices? Like an FX layer with first layer being empty = dry, and the second having a bandpass filter with saturation after it.
It's worth a try!
Check out emphasis/de-emphasis. That might work better than just a parallel bandpass filter.
Another awesome video in this series. When looking at Spectre, what about using Saturn in multiband mode? Isn't that pretty similar. Or if you duplicated two channels, one dry, and one wet with saturn in multiband mode, then mixed the wet one in, would that be the same as Spectre? Just curious on your thoughts.
I think spectre is using a phase inversion to get a copy of only the harmonics being generated from the saturation which is then being blended back with the original. Watch 2L&L's video on this effect which can be done in an Ableton effect rack very easily.
like always... blessed by baphy , thx ♥
What about using same preset from spectre on saturn? Like band separation, tube saturation and band shape. Does it sound good too?
The architecture in Saturn is very different. Spectre doesn't actually put the signal through a typical set of Linkwitz Reilly crossover filters like most "multi-band FX" plugins do. You can test this by putting a square wave through both of them and looking at the output in an oscilloscope. If you put a square wave through Spectre, it's still a perfect square wave on the other side, even at 50/50 mix. (At 100% mix there's no wave at all.) Then grab a node and drag it up and watch how the square wave remains **perfect** but a small wavefolding type of deformation appears in the waveform. Flip to 100% wet and you'll see the shape of the parallel signal that is actually creating that band-focused saturation. Morph between 100% wet to 50% and you'll see how the parallel signal is being **morphed** with the dry square wave.
Now try the same thing through Saturn. Set it to 50% dry/wet. Add two band splits (so you have three bands). Put a square wave through it, and watch how the square wave is TOTALLY deformed into something else entirely. This is the problem with most multiband-FX: they completely change the signal running through them. That's perfectly OKAY if your goal is sound design--and you could make the argument that saturation is "sound design" just like I did in my video. 😉 So using Saturn in this way might very well sound great! Don't be afraid to *try* it. But just be aware that Spectre is quite different. Wavesfactory makes some really excellent plugins. Spectre and Quantum are both unique and very pristine and well-built.
@@Baphometrix thanks for this answer 💪🏻
Love this song!!!
Hi! First of all, thanks for your great work! Learning very much from your videos! I scrolled through the comments but could not find anyone mentioning this: you said that EQ messes with the phase of the signal, and that's right but you're using 'Zero Latency' mode in Pro-Q3 which is designed to mimic the behaviour of an analogue EQ. But Pro-Q3 also has linear mode which introduces some latency (which should be compensated for by the DAW anyway) but doesn't alter the phase at all. Do you use this? I guess it could solve at least phasing issues in your EQ demo!
Linear phase EQ has its uses, but not in the context of the subject matter where I'm talking about EQs in this video.
Hey Bapho, your videos for this series are incredibly good again!
What somehow gives me a headache: Do I put an EQ (e.g. to cut unnecessary frequencies) BEFORE or AFTER dpMeter5 and level from there to zero Db?
Somehow both make sense to me, but do you have some kind of rule?
Thanks a lot!
OK, in EP 6 at about 42 Min you explain that. Solved ;-)
I would expect hard clipping to be more audible than soft clipping because of the sharp discontinuities in the waveform creating more and nastier harmonics. I take the point that soft clipping affects more of the waveform, but still. I guess it's all about that ratio. Do you just have to be hard clipping a very small part of the waveform to counteract the more dramatic waveshaping that it causes?
Also would the feeling of the audio getting warmer/bassier when you clip the signal be due to the harmonics it's creating which emphasize the fundamental?
Your questions about hard clipping will be answered in the next episode. :).
@@Baphometrix I will wait patiently in that case
Hi Baphometrix, thanks for you videos. A question: it's possible use, for "saturating from the bottom", to use multiband pre in KClip instead of others plugin? Thank you
You can certainly try it. If you're using a very soft clipping curve, it will indeed be a type of colored saturation, and limiting it to a specific band will be somewhat similar to what I demonstrate in Spectre or Saturn.
Any tips on making Kick louder? Feel like I keep compromising loudness for a tubby and lifeless kick. Using Oxford inflator, sausage fattener, trying quantum.. thanks for your videos!
I'll be addressing this in Episode 10 "Setting your mix anchor (the kick drum)".
GOAT!!!
I'd love to know your thoughts on Oxford Inflator. It's a waveshaper, but also a clipper, and produces a "saturation"-style effect on audio without producing anything over 0dBFS (if this is desired) and without altering the peaks of a clipped signal. Very interesting plugin, and kind of a "secret weapon" of audio engineers for much of the duration of its life. Thanks for the awesome tutorials!
Inflator is great. I would personally class it as a "saturator" (overall), because you can *hear* the coloration it imparts. But it has been many producers' and engineers' favorite way to get more loudness out of a signal for a long time.
Saturn 2 does frequency specific saturation, to my understanding. Have you compared it to Spectre?
Yes. Saturn is a fine tool. The workflow is different than working in a tool like Spectre (or GodMode), though. The main difference is that Spectre uses crossover filters to chop/segment the spectrum into discrete bands. By contrast, Spectre and GodMode work with bell boost filters that can overlap each other. The results are different.
@@Baphometrix Saturn 2 has multiband saturation-maybe this is still different than Spectre's? I was under the impression that Saturn 2 used crossover filters to partition the signal into discrete bands too. In any event, you can use different saturation on different parts of the spectrum in Saturn 2.
@@ThomasPosen Hmm... Maybe the newer version of Saturn offers a new type of saturation? I admit to not upgrading to the latest version. If so, then yeah, I'm sure Saturn can give you comparable results to Spectre?
Now that kclip has multiband do you prefer it over spectre?
great video
hi baph great video. Where should i put the saturator plugin in my sound design mixing chain? before reverb, delay certainly but what about compression?
Processing in front of or behind compressors is always an "it depends" type of decision. My first choice would be **after** the compressor IF you were using the compressor simply to sharpen the transient punch of a signal. Shape first, then saturate for some loudness and beef. But if I were doing the compression in part for hyped upward compression (such as OTT), then I might choose to saturate first and then hype the saturated result. So.... it all depends. 😆
Thanks for this answer. Adding saturation before upward compression is a really good idea! Btw I just bought spectre and tried it out on a piano and a sample. Strangely I am getting a higher crest factor on the dbmeter... I have to do something wrong
@@chooby4670 Saturation does not always create a lower crest factor. A lot depends on what type of signal you're saturating. And in the case of Spectre, it depends on which part of the spectrum you're boosting and by how much.
If soft clipping is the same thing as saturation, why don’t I see waves getting squared off in a scope when I saturate but I do whenever I soft clip?
the difference is that a soft clipper doesnt square off waves in the same way as a hard clipper. a hard clipper will generate an infinite amount of higher harmonics with equal amplitude for the moment a signal exceeds a threshold. the amplitude of these harmonics is related to the amount of signal exceeding the threshhold. a soft clipper will generate infinite harmonics as well however the amplituse of each individual harmonic is related to the order of the harmonic. e.g. a 100 hz soft clipped sine will have harmonics at 300 500 700 900 1100 hz and so on with each harmonic having less volume then the previous. thats why it is much less audible. think of it like a low passed hard clip while the harder the signal goes into the soft clipper the higher the lowpass cut off frequency is gonna be ( the brighter the result will sound and the more dynamic leveling is gonna happen) hope this makes some sense☺️
another analogy would be a compressor infite ratio a hard knee and 0.00 ms of attack and release while soft clipping would be a compressor with 0.00ms attack and release and infinite ratio but with a soft knee, resulting in the signal to never actually reach the infinite compression ratio and attenuation starting at a lower level then the set threshhold while increasing the ratio the harder the signal goes into the compression. while distorting we always trade absolute amplitude of a wave for generating harmonics. hard clip is black white and soft clip allows for a grey gradient in between😊
Hi Baph. Would love your take on Kelvin Tone Shaper. Its not as edm-ish as Spectre but the quality and the saturation models are awesome 👍 it also has a Soft Clipper and some other tricks.
Tone Projects makes really excellent plugins. I use Unisum as my mastering compressor (when I use one at all, lol). I'm sure Kelvin is awesome as a wideband saturator. It's not the same thing as Spectre, though. Think of Spectre more like a "boost EQ that sounds way better than an EQ". If I had a limited budget and didn't have either Spectre or Kelvin, I'd still recommend to grab Spectre first, because it's so **versatile** for mixing and for loudness.
Wow I love this
Would I get a similar result with saturn 2 on a return track with specific bands and crossovers enabled instead of cashing out on spectre?
Yes and no. Bottom line is that any band-specific saturation is a useful way to boost the energy/loudness of a specific area of the spectrum. Spectre goes about this differently than Saturn 2 does. But ultimately, if it sounds good, it *is* good.
@@Baphometrix thanks for the answer man, do you offer 1 on 1 lessons? I've never done ctz before and I would just let my master limiter push 15-20db of gain reduction (I started only 2 years ago) and now that I have tried ctz on a few existing projects I got questions, I'm making kind of dubstep but at 90 bpm instead of 140-150
Thank You!
How does spectre work exactly? Wouldnt there be an eq built somewhere in the plugin to make it only saturate certain sounds?
Izotope tonal balance has the crest factor feature as well.
Not really... Their Crest Factor meter is just a visual meter with no numbers, and it's weighted towards the bottom end instead of the entire signal. dpMeter is free; there's no reason not to have it for quick, accurate crest factor measurement.
@@Baphometrix Thanks for that. Just downloaded dpMeter.
I also use the eq on saturn bands when I saturate my snares, claps, 808's. Is that bad? Saturating a trap clap or snare can sometime give a harsh sound, so I cut the treble, some lows, etc. Sorry for asking so many questions :/
Hey Baph, I have a genuine question. This is something I've been messing around with over the past two days, but what are your thoughts on Clipping To Zero during the PRODUCTION STAGE??
I make a Melbourne Bounce + Techno kind of genre, very similar to that of Will Sparks, and while referencing his music and trying to get the same LUFs I noticed my songs really started to fall apart when really pushing them to the limit, like distortion in some of the bass frequencies and a few areas with the kick drum. This gave me the idea to try Clipping To Zero from the start, and building the track from the ground up as loud as possible. As a start I sample one of Will's kicks and got mine to sit at the same Peak and RMS value, I then added everything else from there clipping to zero each element thag got added and it gave me by far the cleanest and loudest result I have had so far.
What are your thoughts on this and what sort of problems could I potentially face by doing this and what should I look out for?
(also, would you ever consider doing 1 on 1 discord sessions to help a viewer out and give feedback?)
You should absolutely CTZ right from the very start. With every new sound you add to your project. I talked about this in Episode 2.
@@Baphometrix alright, i've had all the previous episodes playing on my second monitor while working on university stuff, so i obviously missed that part but i'm definitely gonna go back and rewatch it all thoroughly🙏🏼 thanks so much for everything you have shared, absolute game changer for a lot of people i'm sure
Wouldn't spliting the bands with Saturn or ozone exciter essentially be somewhat close to the spectre. Since they have that mix button for each band to blend it in parallel...
I assume spectre is on top of the list cuz the ease of use or is there more with spectre then meets the eye?
If you look for other comments earlier (down below) asking about Saturn, I go into more detail there. Nothing wrong with Saturn. :)
@@Baphometrix will definitely scroll thru them now, tbh yesterday I picked a wild night time to watch the videos so my fingers were faster then my brain 😅
I added saturation with (newfangled saturation on soft clip plus auto gain on).I am getting lower crest values on every track but I am over 7 db on the master. How do I bring the values down on the Master? I measure with dp meter and getting 6 lufs on the master being 7 db over the master.If I lower all the volumes on the master by 7 db than I see a reading of 13 lufs on the master. How do I get to a lower lufs with saturation? Do you do a mix down before you start ctz method and adjust every track volume?do the crest gained can be added back to the volume track ? confused.spent 4 h in the studio and can't get it
Clip off your master buss at 0dB. So that hard clipper should be getting 7dB of attenuation
I'm going to be honest, I either baaaaaarely noticed a difference in sound between the original sound and any of the saturated signals, or I didn't notice it at all. I reran through some of the examples with closed eyes multiple times, but I still couldn't tell a difference most of the time. Is there a good resource or practice method to get me better at ear training the differences? Thanks in advance!
ruclips.net/video/UY9cJh7PyOQ/видео.html& yeah, this
@@jona8659 Thank you for this. Was very helpful!
I see you are using Saturn 1, but doesn't Saturn 2 have a multiband distortion the same as Spectre?
i was thinking the same thing. not sure if saturn can do the bell shape ?
This is what I'm wondering.
Saturn 2 does multiband and linear phase, so it looks a lot like what Spectre can do to me. Would you still prefer Stectre over Satrun 2, Baphometrix?
Hi man nice job as always my.big questions i got kazrog clip and its for sure.a.different version then yours it has an oversampling knob and i cant get how to turn it off i leave it on 1 and it sould be off until you gonna touch the oversampling knob do you know how it works ? And as you told in your tutorial i tent to use it almost on every track in a traspaent way
unless its a sub or a sub bass tht im.not.gonna.clip.at all, I'm not sure about the master if I'm doing right putting a free venus clip at the end before the limiter stage with hard clip 1.5 or 2 db of clipping and setting s post overspampling to 0 x2 i also have tried far more extreme setting and i found on some project gonna sound better with 8x oversampling and 6/7 db hardclipping do you thing its gonna be too much? Squezze out a limiter by reducing 7 db on the master its gonna be terrible but i think 6db of hard clipping sounds good in lots of situation.Help !
I'm not sure what to say. The latest version of KClip is 3.2.4, which hasn't changed or been updated since Feb of last year (2021). I'm using version 3.2.4 in my videos. As you can see, there's no "Oversampling" knob in the GUI. (It's hidden in a settings tab, and yes, you should leave it at 1x, which means NO oversampling.) As for the rest, by all means you can experiment with variations on the techniques, settings, and approach I'm showing you. If your variations seem to work well for you, great!
@@Baphometrix thanx man i was wondering but u make it clear now about 1x i tought it was off on 1x but not sure thanx again ...and when u say to not have a big massive clip.at the end instead of clipping as ctz, what exactly means massive in db just to understand if i do something wrong using ctz on the last stage i already get the right loudness in mixing also before i got to know your strategy but definly better with ctz in terms of overall resault and quicker then i was used too but the last boost on the masterbus it seeems to sound good using ctz also if 7bd its a.lot i never ever im.my life compress or limiting so hard always 1/2 not.more then 4 db of reduction now using ctz i noticed i dont need to.set the threshold more then 0.5/1 db of reduction on the limiter but i hve tried to raise the clip knob at 7 db with Venus on.the mast with oversampling at 8x sounds great do you know what happens i think oversampling before a limiter is crucial and done with a clipper raising the clipper instead of pushin the limiter treeshold has a really huge benefit but this is possible only working with ctZ mixing if you try what im saying or u already done some tests about it lemme know have a wonderful day!
having serious ah-ha moments the whole way through this.. this is gold.
Right I love Spectre for quick stuff but Saturn 2 can pretty much do everything this does and more. It even has envelope controllers for transient control or other modulation.
Yes and no. Spectre's architecture is different. There are other questions here asking about Saturn where I go into more detail about why I tend to reach for Spectre first. But Saturn, Trash, Thermal, Rift, etc. etc. are all very cool too.
thanks!
Saturn is a multiband saturator. Is it so different than Spectre?
In principle, “no”. You could make bands in Saturn and saturate as you please, then blend wet/dry with mix, but spectre just makes it way easier
different approach. Spectre is a parallel saturator. Saturn is a multiband saturator.
@@Baphometrix Saturn has a mix knob, so I guess it’s also “parallel”?
@@PuRe_AdDicT Not in the same way as Spectre. To attempt to emulate Spectre with Saturn would require you to increase both the Drive and the Level of a given band in certain proportions that change with more density/volume. All I can say is that I cannot easily make Saturn sound anywhere near as "clean and transparent" as Spectre.
@@Baphometrix I sure appreciate your reply, thanks and subbed!
Have you ever considered analog summing? :) I guess it’s a similar concept to how you’re using the plugins.
3:51 In & out are reversed !?