Awesome video, Anthony. I respect your stuff and your depth so much. I've thrown SO many viewers your way for that great video you did on arranging/sequencing for loudness, because it's such a fundamental concept and you did an amazing job explaining and demonstrating it in like 20 minutes!
Massive thanks to both of you for teaching me so much over the years... So much amazing information that I would struggle to find elsewhere... Keep up the amazing work!
Guys, I'm a big fan of both your channels, thank you! @baphometrix, which video are you referring to? I had a quick flick through Anthony's vids and not sure which one?
You gave me a 6 year delayed eureka moment in this video. I had seen a producer use Saturators like that before but he didn't explain what it was doing but rather said you should be doing this on each track. Now I understand why he was using it and why I couldn't hear an audible difference when I tried to use it for this before lol. Thanks!
Just found this video. This lesson made an immediate and drastic improvement in my mixes. Ended up buying KClip in the process. I have had Kazrog's True Iron for some time now and it's a go-to plugin for me. Thank you!
Definitely! She should get a medal haha. Im just happy that finally i can direct people somewhere when i get the “how the heck do i make my mixes loud” daily dm!
@@SeedtoStage really enjoying seeing everyone's unique takes on the technique with various plugs, stock and otherwise. I think it helps people see these things as different brands of the same tools rather than completely different effects.
i think the point is: if you already compressed a signal you can then trim off the excess transients with a clipper if the introduction of white noise is okay to you. if you want different harmonic content on overshoots grab a different algorithm, or a different limiting technique, like a zener limiter, a vari-mu, etc. with different harmonic content.
The Live 12 beta has a new stock Limiter. I’d love to see a quick comparison to Fab Filter’s if you’re up for it. Mostly because I don’t have that plugin :)
Hi Anthony, I think you forget to click the output button back to zero in Kclip after adjusting the linked input and output buttons. At least that's what I learned from the @Baphometrix tutorials! Think the linked buttons are linked to listen to the clipping at a constant level. Thanks for the super nice videos!! David
Great content as always, Anthony. I saw this concept via Baphometrix first, and now again through your post. Quick question - is the idea to mix without clipping first - i.e. get the relative track levels to where they’re sounding right - and then go through the clipping exercise, first at individual track level, and then on subsequent busses? That makes the most sense to me, but would love your insights here.
Hi im no pro but i like to adjust the levels after everything is normalized on every track with the gain “staging” (getting every sound to a target level using dbMeter5) and then clipping if its still not loud enough to match the kick and snare (which you should start with to set a baseline for the loudest sounds in your song)
Hi there, why were you clipping after the Hybrid Reverb in your Synth track ? (Labelled 10 Instrument). From what i've understood from the Baphometrix videos, you'd want to do clipping prior to adding any effects in the signal chain. A) Could that have been why you opted to use a Glue Compressor ? Furthermore, was it because the Hybrid Reverb added to the timbre of the synth, that is why you chose to add KClip3 after it ? B) If Hybrid Reverb was influential to the timbre you desired, why not include it inside of the Instrument Rack and blend it in with the dry signal ? Thanks in advance!
Once again, an awesome video! Question tho: where would you put KClip in a chain to get the most out of a loud signal when you have a maximizer on there as well - on a Master channel or a drum buss?
Question: If you increase the input volume of the clipper (KClip) until you get distortion you stop increasing. But what happens if you song is played on different speakers. On some speakers the distortion kicks in sooner than on other speakers. Or doesn't it?
Really cool video! But I must say that at 15:20 mins I can hear drastic changes in lows and on the punch portion of the Kclip process. Maybe that's because clipping for this purpose (get louder mixes) was not the goal of the Kclip program, I don't know. Maybe heavy low freqs material is not a good choice for a razor-sharp wave format (808s are mostly sine waves, and I'm sure you know that). But I'm still looking for a better solution... I mean, for situations like that, where kicks like this one simply seem to fight against the clipping transparently process... ...maybe something like you've done with that synth, maybe the shape of the kick can be another issue. Who knows?
Great video! The example using a compressor to shape the dynamics before running the signal through KClip was super helpful. Also, I’m pretty sure baphometrix’s pronouns are she/her fyi. Looking forward to your next vid 👍
@@SeedtoStage No worries! (See my comment about it in another thread.) BTW, yes, I'm super glad you showed how a typical bus compressor attack can "thin out" the transient enough (and gently reshape the sustain lower in amplitude) so that you **can** clip an un-clippable signal. It's a very useful trick!
@@SeedtoStage what do you do with all the extra headroom you get from clipping to make the track louder? Say you have - 9db at the master. Do you just use a limiter and push the signal into it by lowering the threshold?
hey @SeedtoStage - I'm wondering if you've ever noticed one interesting thing after applying KClip to the audio channel - it looks like if you cut the low end from the sound (lets say it's hats and you want no low end on them) by applying the equalizer, then apply KClip, then add a spectral analyzer - you'll see the low end there again (though it's looks quiter than before). is there any way to get rid of the low end post-KClip completely?
Watching this brings up two questions for me as it relates to mixing and mastering. So I understand this is decreasing unwanted headroom. Is there ever scenarios where this is squashing dynamics too much before bus compression or final limiting? Is there generally a range of dynamics you look for when you do this? Curious if anyone has any advice. Im new to audio production but this channel has helped me so much. Appreciate your community and content.
Yeah i would say in most musical genres, clipping isnt really necessary but for electronic music it is much more common. But yes even in electronic music, reducing dynamic range too much makes music lifeless and boring. Most electronic artists make 2 different versions of their music too, one for stage and one for their album releases on streaming platforms
Thank you for the instructions.Do you set your track levels to zero and than you start clipping?or lets say your drums are at -12 db ,instruments at -6db and leave the leveles how you made the songs and and than clip?
Hi there, I've seen a lot of your content about using Saturator to control peaks / balance RMS + Peak by doing the "drive + / output -" trick, very cool stuff! I'm curious, do you know of any plugins that allow for this same result, for when we are working outside of Ableton ? I've checked a few of my saturation plugins and their controls make it a lot less clear how to establish that 'balanced' offset between drive and output. Know of anything that comparable to ableton's awesome Saturator tool, and can be used for this same specific purpose? Thanks!
could you explain to me the concept of putting -10 db of output after 10 db of input? Why cant you just turn up the input until you start hearing it clip, without touching the output level? and if you are saving almost 10db of headroom, arent you no longer clipping at 0? does this contradict @baphometrix technique?
Any saturation plugin with a clipping algorithm will accomplish this to a certain degree. But if there are any curves or softening to the saturation, it will be more and more audible.
Is everyone else just finding out about clipping to achieve loudness too? cus I feel like I've struggled for years and never heard of it untill recently and now I see everyone talking about it.
Anyone know if it is recommended to remove all clippers (i.e. on your kick, snare & drum bus) after a label has signed the track, and needs their mastering engineer to master it?
Can somebody explain what can be different between hard clipping algorithms? It's such a basic operation that I wonder where there is any room for variation. The only thing that comes to mind is different levels of oversampling, but then it's still basically the same thing, just on a higher sample rate.
Youre right, as i understand it, its more the user interface of the plugin, visual feedback, oversampling, but ve also heard that subtle waveshaping occurs on some clippers and Baphometrix says that Eventide's Saturate plugin does "spectral" clipping which can sound a bit different. I dont have experience with that plugin yet.
@@SeedtoStage Hm, thanks. I would imagine that any waveshaping only makes it less transparent, but I might be wrong. I guess you could do different things to the flat clipped tops maybe. Wasn't aware of spectral clipping, thanks for pointing that out.
your videos are great man, Ive put binging them as part of my schedule at this point. started off watching tutorials from You Suck at Producing. I prefer how you focus on getting everything out of stock stuff on ableton and help a lot with IDM/Experimental stuff. I also find your tutorials to be more advanced - this is for people serious about producing Thank you very much
Let me smash in some point who needs to be recognized: Especially small devices like phone speaker, standard in ears, audio systems in cars are made to sound good up to a specific standard loudness! Now, if you make your master louder than this threshold it will make your mix louder on those devices, BUT it will sound like Crap, cause the speakers cannot handly the loudness! I could easily go louder than standard without having any losses in my mix, but I don't, because I do not pay a crappy wasted sound for more loudness. Just saying...
I can’t shave off more than 1-3 dB without my transients turning into mush and it’s peaking at a low level to begin with, just setting my average levels. Don’t understand how you can shave off 10dB. Where using the same plug-ins.
Each sound will react differently to clipping. If you’re working with sounds that have a low harmonic content like sine and triangle waves or soft sounds, saturation and clipping can be immediately apparent and undesirable. If you need more out of those kind of sounds, perhaps compression is the ticket.
Really great look at this topic! Thank you! I have a question I feel like you might know a little something about. A lot of times when I'll clip out peaks on sounds, whether its with a saturator or glue compressor soft clip, I'll add an EQ afterwards. For some reason that always reintroduces the peaks I just got done cutting and I have to follow the eq up with another clipper. Any idea? I've tried it with Pro-Q3 and EQ8, and I'm not making any boosts. usually just a high passing out the lows.
A clipper is commonly used at the end of a signal chain because eq works by way of phasing and that can cause a track to increase or decrease in peak value.
Lots of mistakes you did there. For example: you could have used a softer clipping curve to process that melody instead of assuming that hard-clipping would be useful. And why do you leave the reverb in the middle of the chain, then go on to compress and clip the reverbed signal? You could have used the revetb to the last position, which sonically makes more sense. Are you a professional?
This video you are commenting on is about hard clipping not soft clipping curved saturation. Hence… no soft clipping. Also while it’s common practice to put reverb on a send or at least at the end of a chain, compressing after reverb is in a signal can provide interesting results and be more of an exaggerated effect. What do you think happens when you record drums with mics in a drum room? There is reverb in the room and drum mics almost always get compressed. Compression after reverb is very common. In fact hard compression on drum room mic signals is common practice. With all things audio, there are more ways than one to accomplish things and avoiding formulaic solutions is a generally good idea rather than “always do this or that”. None of what I did on this video was a mistake.
@@SeedtoStage Inaccurate! Compressing reverb tails as an special FX is different from the mistaken compression and saturation you have done due to sub par order of your plugin chain. If you want to compress / saturate reverb for an exaggerated effect, I would advice you to use a separate send / fx channel and apply your saturation directly to the reverbed signal. This way you can focus and fine tune the saturation for the reverb instead of going all over the place and applying it on a semi-reverbed dry and wet signal without focus.
Learn Ableton with me! courses.seedtostage.com/
Awesome video, Anthony. I respect your stuff and your depth so much. I've thrown SO many viewers your way for that great video you did on arranging/sequencing for loudness, because it's such a fundamental concept and you did an amazing job explaining and demonstrating it in like 20 minutes!
The respect is mutual! I hope that folks make it over to your channel and take the time to understand! You’ve done the whole space a huge service.
Massive thanks to both of you for teaching me so much over the years... So much amazing information that I would struggle to find elsewhere... Keep up the amazing work!
Massive respect Bapho!!!
@@SeedtoStage I subscribed because of this comment. I respect baphos word
Guys, I'm a big fan of both your channels, thank you! @baphometrix, which video are you referring to? I had a quick flick through Anthony's vids and not sure which one?
You gave me a 6 year delayed eureka moment in this video. I had seen a producer use Saturators like that before but he didn't explain what it was doing but rather said you should be doing this on each track. Now I understand why he was using it and why I couldn't hear an audible difference when I tried to use it for this before lol. Thanks!
That’s what’s up! Grats 🎉
You read my mind! I just bought Kclip, so this video is EXACTLY what I need right now. Thank you for continuing to be the best, Anthony.
Just found this video. This lesson made an immediate and drastic improvement in my mixes. Ended up buying KClip in the process. I have had Kazrog's True Iron for some time now and it's a go-to plugin for me. Thank you!
I’m wondering the difference between the paid version, and KClip free
Really loved watching this in tandem with Baphs CPZ playlist. Excellent addition to the topic. Thank you!
This video is pure gold! Answers all my questions for Electronic Music atm.
bro im happy baphometrix is getting the attention she deserves, she truly a god at what she does
yeah, Baphometrix tuts are Game Changer!
she*
@@niexle5781 OH. excuse my presumption, i didn't know :/
Wow, thank you. Essential piece of knowledge, you're a blessing for all home-grown music.
Defo the best video I’ve watched on this topic - very concise and easy to understand subbed!
One of the most informative videos I’ve ever watched on clipping and limiting. Thank you so much!!! - please do more of this stuff
Baphy really started a whole youtube producer trend didn't she lmao
Definitly 😅
Definitely! She should get a medal haha. Im just happy that finally i can direct people somewhere when i get the “how the heck do i make my mixes loud” daily dm!
@@SeedtoStage really enjoying seeing everyone's unique takes on the technique with various plugs, stock and otherwise. I think it helps people see these things as different brands of the same tools rather than completely different effects.
Yeees!!!Jajaja
yeah, Baphometrix tuts are Game Changer!
i feel like i am starting to intuit the problems my mixes have but don't have the understanding to solve them yet. this video really helps!
i think the point is: if you already compressed a signal you can then trim off the excess transients with a clipper if the introduction of white noise is okay to you. if you want different harmonic content on overshoots grab a different algorithm, or a different limiting technique, like a zener limiter, a vari-mu, etc. with different harmonic content.
you are a god among men
I needed this video today! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, Master Tthogz.
Always quality content.
Very good content, clear and to the point. Tks!
What a nice explanation!
The Live 12 beta has a new stock Limiter. I’d love to see a quick comparison to Fab Filter’s if you’re up for it. Mostly because I don’t have that plugin :)
Hi Anthony, I think you forget to click the output button back to zero in Kclip after adjusting the linked input and output buttons. At least that's what I learned from the @Baphometrix tutorials! Think the linked buttons are linked to listen to the clipping at a constant level. Thanks for the super nice videos!! David
Excellent knowledge as usual. Your teachings are so well done. Thanks
Ableton is my thing too.
Awesome tutorial, thank you 🤘🏻
This really well done. Huge fan of Bapho.
Awesome!!
Great video, really good distillation of baphometrix's clipping videos.
Just a side note at 14:00 I believe she goes by she/her not he
Great content as always, Anthony. I saw this concept via Baphometrix first, and now again through your post. Quick question - is the idea to mix without clipping first - i.e. get the relative track levels to where they’re sounding right - and then go through the clipping exercise, first at individual track level, and then on subsequent busses? That makes the most sense to me, but would love your insights here.
Hi im no pro but i like to adjust the levels after everything is normalized on every track with the gain “staging” (getting every sound to a target level using dbMeter5) and then clipping if its still not loud enough to match the kick and snare (which you should start with to set a baseline for the loudest sounds in your song)
great r..thx..
for live Sets with only istruments we used to often the saturator...
Look like we must found a mixed comp, saturator way ..thx..
Thank you Anthony !!!
great lesson, thanks!
Super cool concept and video
I really love your content and teaching style. Amazing work!!
Great video!❤
Thank you man, that was a good one!
super explications !! merci ...
Much appreciated!
always excellent videos bro. thank you!
Hi there, why were you clipping after the Hybrid Reverb in your Synth track ? (Labelled 10 Instrument). From what i've understood from the Baphometrix videos, you'd want to do clipping prior to adding any effects in the signal chain.
A) Could that have been why you opted to use a Glue Compressor ? Furthermore, was it because the Hybrid Reverb added to the timbre of the synth, that is why you chose to add KClip3 after it ?
B) If Hybrid Reverb was influential to the timbre you desired, why not include it inside of the Instrument Rack and blend it in with the dry signal ?
Thanks in advance!
Suscribed, sent here by Baphometrix :D Thx for knowledge sharing
Awesome stuff! Very usefull knowledge!
Once again, an awesome video! Question tho: where would you put KClip in a chain to get the most out of a loud signal when you have a maximizer on there as well - on a Master channel or a drum buss?
Both
Question: If you increase the input volume of the clipper (KClip) until you get distortion you stop increasing. But what happens if you song is played on different speakers. On some speakers the distortion kicks in sooner than on other speakers. Or doesn't it?
Really cool video!
But I must say that at 15:20 mins I can hear drastic changes in lows and on the punch portion of the Kclip process.
Maybe that's because clipping for this purpose (get louder mixes) was not the goal of the Kclip program, I don't know.
Maybe heavy low freqs material is not a good choice for a razor-sharp wave format (808s are mostly sine waves, and I'm sure you know that).
But I'm still looking for a better solution...
I mean, for situations like that, where kicks like this one simply seem to fight against the clipping transparently process...
...maybe something like you've done with that synth, maybe the shape of the kick can be another issue. Who knows?
Nice one
Cheers you legend!
super helpfull! Thanks
Great video! The example using a compressor to shape the dynamics before running the signal through KClip was super helpful. Also, I’m pretty sure baphometrix’s pronouns are she/her fyi. Looking forward to your next vid 👍
Ah my bad! I didn't know!
@@SeedtoStage No worries! (See my comment about it in another thread.) BTW, yes, I'm super glad you showed how a typical bus compressor attack can "thin out" the transient enough (and gently reshape the sustain lower in amplitude) so that you **can** clip an un-clippable signal. It's a very useful trick!
@@SeedtoStage what do you do with all the extra headroom you get from clipping to make the track louder? Say you have - 9db at the master. Do you just use a limiter and push the signal into it by lowering the threshold?
Awesome video!
Damn dude, i've had both plugin for YEARS and now it's just clicked 😂😫
Thank you!
hey @SeedtoStage - I'm wondering if you've ever noticed one interesting thing after applying KClip to the audio channel - it looks like if you cut the low end from the sound (lets say it's hats and you want no low end on them) by applying the equalizer, then apply KClip, then add a spectral analyzer - you'll see the low end there again (though it's looks quiter than before). is there any way to get rid of the low end post-KClip completely?
Watching this brings up two questions for me as it relates to mixing and mastering. So I understand this is decreasing unwanted headroom. Is there ever scenarios where this is squashing dynamics too much before bus compression or final limiting? Is there generally a range of dynamics you look for when you do this? Curious if anyone has any advice. Im new to audio production but this channel has helped me so much. Appreciate your community and content.
Yeah i would say in most musical genres, clipping isnt really necessary but for electronic music it is much more common. But yes even in electronic music, reducing dynamic range too much makes music lifeless and boring. Most electronic artists make 2 different versions of their music too, one for stage and one for their album releases on streaming platforms
@@SeedtoStage Thank you, appreciate your input
Thanks, great video! New suscriptor for here!
Thank you for the instructions.Do you set your track levels to zero and than you start clipping?or lets say your drums are at -12 db ,instruments at -6db and leave the leveles how you made the songs and and than clip?
Hi there, I've seen a lot of your content about using Saturator to control peaks / balance RMS + Peak by doing the "drive + / output -" trick, very cool stuff! I'm curious, do you know of any plugins that allow for this same result, for when we are working outside of Ableton ? I've checked a few of my saturation plugins and their controls make it a lot less clear how to establish that 'balanced' offset between drive and output. Know of anything that comparable to ableton's awesome Saturator tool, and can be used for this same specific purpose? Thanks!
Kclip3
@@SeedtoStage Guess I probably shoulda watched the video, eh? :P Thanks!
@@michaelarthurholloway9539 😂😂😂😂
@@SeedtoStage lol
could you explain to me the concept of putting -10 db of output after 10 db of input? Why cant you just turn up the input until you start hearing it clip, without touching the output level? and if you are saving almost 10db of headroom, arent you no longer clipping at 0? does this contradict @baphometrix technique?
Is it only with ableton saturation that you can do this or any saturation vst?
Any saturation plugin with a clipping algorithm will accomplish this to a certain degree. But if there are any curves or softening to the saturation, it will be more and more audible.
Where could i find that snare and kick?
There is no video i see from you i don't learn. Wish i could pay the course, but i live in Brazil...
Is everyone else just finding out about clipping to achieve loudness too? cus I feel like I've struggled for years and never heard of it untill recently and now I see everyone talking about it.
Anyone know if it is recommended to remove all clippers (i.e. on your kick, snare & drum bus) after a label has signed the track, and needs their mastering engineer to master it?
Using the demo at the mo, I can;t get any part of the wavefrom to be red, to feel like it's been clipped at all. I get a scrolling waveform
sometimes i wish youTube allowed memes: "SOUNDS GOOD BRO" you know the one...
Can somebody explain what can be different between hard clipping algorithms? It's such a basic operation that I wonder where there is any room for variation. The only thing that comes to mind is different levels of oversampling, but then it's still basically the same thing, just on a higher sample rate.
Youre right, as i understand it, its more the user interface of the plugin, visual feedback, oversampling, but ve also heard that subtle waveshaping occurs on some clippers and Baphometrix says that Eventide's Saturate plugin does "spectral" clipping which can sound a bit different. I dont have experience with that plugin yet.
@@SeedtoStage Hm, thanks. I would imagine that any waveshaping only makes it less transparent, but I might be wrong. I guess you could do different things to the flat clipped tops maybe. Wasn't aware of spectral clipping, thanks for pointing that out.
your videos are great man, Ive put binging them as part of my schedule at this point. started off watching tutorials from You Suck at Producing. I prefer how you focus on getting everything out of stock stuff on ableton and help a lot with IDM/Experimental stuff. I also find your tutorials to be more advanced - this is for people serious about producing
Thank you very much
2:46 what differences should I be listening for? my untrained ears can't hear a difference
pro Tipps ! :-)
Subbed
Those short transients that we re not able to detect and nominally perceive , to some insects , these are a full song 😂
I love you man lol
👍👍👌👌
Let me smash in some point who needs to be recognized: Especially small devices like phone speaker, standard in ears, audio systems in cars are made to sound good up to a specific standard loudness! Now, if you make your master louder than this threshold it will make your mix louder on those devices, BUT it will sound like Crap, cause the speakers cannot handly the loudness! I could easily go louder than standard without having any losses in my mix, but I don't, because I do not pay a crappy wasted sound for more loudness. Just saying...
I can’t shave off more than 1-3 dB without my transients turning into mush and it’s peaking at a low level to begin with, just setting my average levels. Don’t understand how you can shave off 10dB. Where using the same plug-ins.
Each sound will react differently to clipping. If you’re working with sounds that have a low harmonic content like sine and triangle waves or soft sounds, saturation and clipping can be immediately apparent and undesirable. If you need more out of those kind of sounds, perhaps compression is the ticket.
And watch out because, like compression, clipping will alter your dynamics and squash your sound. So be careful
Really great look at this topic! Thank you! I have a question I feel like you might know a little something about. A lot of times when I'll clip out peaks on sounds, whether its with a saturator or glue compressor soft clip, I'll add an EQ afterwards. For some reason that always reintroduces the peaks I just got done cutting and I have to follow the eq up with another clipper. Any idea? I've tried it with Pro-Q3 and EQ8, and I'm not making any boosts. usually just a high passing out the lows.
A clipper is commonly used at the end of a signal chain because eq works by way of phasing and that can cause a track to increase or decrease in peak value.
ableton gang
19:19
Too much yapping, very little content. This vid should have been 5 min tops
Lots of mistakes you did there. For example: you could have used a softer clipping curve to process that melody instead of assuming that hard-clipping would be useful.
And why do you leave the reverb in the middle of the chain, then go on to compress and clip the reverbed signal? You could have used the revetb to the last position, which sonically makes more sense.
Are you a professional?
This video you are commenting on is about hard clipping not soft clipping curved saturation. Hence… no soft clipping. Also while it’s common practice to put reverb on a send or at least at the end of a chain, compressing after reverb is in a signal can provide interesting results and be more of an exaggerated effect. What do you think happens when you record drums with mics in a drum room? There is reverb in the room and drum mics almost always get compressed. Compression after reverb is very common. In fact hard compression on drum room mic signals is common practice. With all things audio, there are more ways than one to accomplish things and avoiding formulaic solutions is a generally good idea rather than “always do this or that”. None of what I did on this video was a mistake.
@@SeedtoStage Inaccurate! Compressing reverb tails as an special FX is different from the mistaken compression and saturation you have done due to sub par order of your plugin chain.
If you want to compress / saturate reverb for an exaggerated effect, I would advice you to use a separate send / fx channel and apply your saturation directly to the reverbed signal. This way you can focus and fine tune the saturation for the reverb instead of going all over the place and applying it on a semi-reverbed dry and wet signal without focus.
you are a god among men