Clippers... it's complicated
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- Опубликовано: 20 мар 2024
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Hello, I'm Nicholas Di Lorenzo, Studio Owner, Mixing and Mastering engineer at Panorama Studios.
I'm an Italian-Australian born and raised in Melbourne. I've been a creative professional for 10 years managing some pretty awesome projects for artists, labels and producers all around the globe.
What motivates and drives me?
My family,
Good food,
Great coffee.
You can find me on many platforms:
Instagram: / panorama_mastering
Facebook: / panoramamastering
Twitter: / panoramamasters
Kit: kit.co/Panorama_Mastering
finally someone that explains what a clipper is
You're welcome!
Much less complicated now thanks to these 2 videos you've made on clipping. Thanks again! I've solved the question i raised on your other video on finding the gain meter in RX- the resolution is clearer in this video and can see that you had the de-clip window active and this reveals the meter I couldn't see :-)
Somehow the youtube algorythm recommended me your channel just in the last couple of days. I've been binge watching since then. Your videos strike the perfect balance between being accessible but with a lot attention to detail. And no snake oil just good information supported by good examples so we can hear for ourselves.
Welcome aboard! I really appreciate that!
This is other worldly educational content that was needed a very long time ago. Thanks Mr. Panorama Mixing. Will watch every deep dive into a topic you do.
Love your videos. Great way of showing visual examples.
Glad you like them! thanks for watching.
Brilliantly clarifies the applications for clippers and limiters, and how they relate to loudness and distortion.
Thanks mate!
Editing is really good in this video! And yes a clipper is an essential waveshaper. And if you know some math (and read a bit on the signal processing forums) you can get really close transfer functions of various hardware types. For example germanium diode the transfer function is essentially tanh.
2nd was my fave.
me too
i can hear the reverb nice in the bg
Interesting choice
@@panorama_mastering it sounded cleaner to me. The first one was too distorted so I kinda had my ears on alert for distortion. I thought the 3rd one still had a bit of distortion in the low end. Why? Was that the one with just a limiter without any clipping?
same thing
Thanks, this is really helpful! It's rare to find somebody on RUclips who is really knowlegeable about these things.
Glad it was helpful!
Always excellent! Thank you!
You're welcome!
Love the math section, keep doing that! It´s really interesting seeing how plugins actually work (having an idea at least)
Will do when possible! I agree, having transparency on the balistics of how it all goes together is IMPORTANT!
@@panorama_mastering it really is, do you recommend any audio programming channels? I´m really interested in that
Always learning insane new levels of detail from you, sir - thank you!
I love StandardClip and Event Horizon (keep coming back to this one). I may just go insane trying all these clippers, their parameters, and comparing…
It's a confusing space to navigate!
Such helpful content! Cheers, Richey
No sweat! My pleasure!
I love your channel. I suggest you try Acustica Ash Ultra clipper. It sounds way more transparent and musical than StandardClip (you can get away with 4db hard clipping on a master), has a new snappy GUI, and very advanced AntiAliasing algorithms. I use both so no bias here, StandardClip in CPU loaded projects, Ash Ultra in mastering sessions.
Newfangled Saturate is just better in every possible way except for being a Lavry clone, but it's better than a Lavry so it doesn't matter. And it's 1/4 the price and goes on sale often
Tried it, didn't like it. Found it kind of grainy which might suit some genres, but overall not a go to. Ultra ash has also Lavry, Bettermaker and much more goodies/clones. Give it a try, you might fall for its organic sound and texture.@@django3108
I'll definitely give it a try; I will say, hard-clipping is hard-clipping,
Unless it's doing very specific other processing to the signal; I'd be curious to null test it's hard clipping against any other clipper;
Typically the only thing that differs with hard-clippers is the OS algorithm/filters they use for upsampling.
@@panorama_mastering detail preservation is why newfangled Saturate is definitively the BEST clipper.
@@panorama_mastering - agreed about all that and like you my go-to is often StandardClip / but I love the newfangled / there’s something magical in that ‘detail preservation’ slider - and also the asymmetry option….
the best advice I got was even in mix-engineering, chain of plugins is all doing different things and that it's important I don't let any one plugin overwork itself. I was only starting out at the time/ toward your formula comparison of clippers and limiters, I believe this was the easiest way for me to understand at the time and look for what he said, since no plugin wears and tears, but that no plugin should do all the work.
Good practice!
Your educational content is always excellent. You cover some stuff I found from trial and error but you explain why it works too. Thanks very much for posting.
No worries; thanks for sharing!
great info!!!
Glad it was helpful!
Watched it twice to really dig in. Thank you for the examples!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Perfection!
Thanks m808
Great explanation!
Thanks m808!
awesome explanation.
You're welcome!
thanx... extremely clear..
You're most welcome
I love Newfangled Saturate. Not sure how it works, but their "Details preservation" setting sounds amazing. I 'think' they may be doing some kind of fold-over distortion to bring the clipped peaks back over into the waveform space (or whatever the technical term is).
I like to use transient plugins before going into a hard clipper to enhance the pseudo-transients created by clipping - only a little bit, though. Sharing a little bit of my secret sauce. :)
YES! This is interesting, I have looked into it, and I have ideas for something in the future using this!
@@panorama_mastering Nice! Can't wait to see it. :)
this is GOLD
Bro I love this stuff
You're welcome!
brother ill remember you for the rest of my life. You are doing gods work here. Thanks
Thanks man, appreciate it!
@@panorama_mastering Thank U bro. I’ve learned so much since I discovered this channel.
I've used Standard Clip at times, and it can give good results. Right now I'm using Softube Clipper and Schwabe Gold Clip with a limiter, currently that's SSL X-Limit.
Great demo
Great extended explanation!
The short explanation is that clippers are GREAT to tame (razor off) fast spikes like transients. So, preferably, percussive instruments. The hardest the clipping, the shortest the razor time. The softest the clipping, the longer de clipping time (considering that it starts earlier, before the threshold value). So it tends to sound better for TONAL instruments.
The way shown in the video is way more elaborate and can make us better understand, so be prepared, to put these tools to work properly and not just as "plugin users"...
I hope it helps.
Thanks for sharing and watching
Gods work. Thanks Nicolas. Still trying to understand the soft clip calculation you're doing with the percentage slider, but thats on my non mathematical brain, will get it eventually.
Last one cleanest to my ears
Interesting choice
Great video! StandardCLIP is the best, especially when you crank up the oversampling.
It's damn good!
Brilliantly explained.
One can still choose off-settings for effect, but knowing the exact function makes for an educated choice.
One more method that makes processing smoother is editing rogue peaks in an editor.
Well worth the time resulting in a file that has no evil surprises . And then someone comes up and offers that as math for a plug-in. What would that be ... spot-reduction? selective-clipping? smart-clipping?
Thanks mate;
Well, it'd literally use the same for loop with, if, else, elseif, else as clippers use;
Something which comes to mind is Standard Clip's 2:1 clipper; where it modifies all sample values above the threshold at 2:1
Ear training time😛
The 1st is outshined by the 2nd and the 3rd one.
The 2nd one is punchier and has more sheen on the vocal (maybe because it's louder?).
The 3rd one is even punchier, and the kick drum sounds "rounder". The vocal seems to have backed off a little bit (less sheen) and the clip feels warmer and darker.
Seems like the 3rd clip IS the combination of soft + hard clipping and limiting.
Since it sound like a dark song, and the thump feels like it's punching through the singer's and the listeners' heart, my choice would be the 3rd one.
interesting choices.
2nd one was gorgeous
interesting choice.
Hi really good video. I have a quick question when I'm mixing my vocals with all the instrumental stems my stems are most of the times at -7db and my vocals are -9db peak, should i route all the stems to a separate channel and use a clipper before going to the master? or Is better to use a clipper in the master with all the vocals? I only clip about -1.6 most of the times.
Have you used Kazrog's Kclip? If so, what do you think about that plugin?
Hello, what are your thoughts on using UVR5 with the de-noise module to clean up vocals ? do you think I should gainclip vocals then clean them or clean them then gainclip?
Hey Mate,
No thoughts on UVR5; I use RX modules for cleaning up noise.
I do clip gain AFTER any cleaning up.
Limiters punch holes in your mix. And sometimes also add a transient softening sound of look-ahead. When the Waves L2 was first released we still preferred moderate clipping.
Yeap
🔥🔥
Thanks m808
what are your thoughts on goldclip?
Question: you work primarily in Pro Tools, and thus process audio files through clippers and limiters, but many people work with projects that combine audio and midi triggered material. Besides the challenges of metering accurately at the sample level, I’m curious if using these tools change behavior when dealing with audio information from midi triggered instruments or samplers? Would a clipper’s ability to look ahead and do accurate analysis be compromised for example. An interesting question if nothing else, especially when you consider at least a percentage of your viewers may not be bouncing tracks to audio before mixing. Thoughts?
Signal flow, so if you’re ysing a soft-synth, that is producing sample based audio output, if your processor is placed post that information it will process exactly as if it where an audio file
hey man, one question, do compressors and limiters reduce only the part of the waveform that exceeds the threshold? or do they reduce the entire wave that surpasses it?
the entire wave .
Are you hard clipping AND Soft (logarithmic) clipping at the START of your chain now, using the same instance of StandardCLIP (Like track 3 at 11:22)?
If so, do you still use 'regular' soft clipping in addition to this at the end of your chain (before the limiter of course)?
EXAMPLE: StandardClip Hard & Soft (logarithmic) > other mastering processing > Ozone Maximizer Soft Clip > Limiter
In a different video he stated he uses soft clip pro at -6 for the hard clip and 17% which is ≈ -8 for the soft clip threshold
@@JazzyFizzleDrummers Thanks. My question is more about whether Nick now uses 2 soft clippers on the master, or has replaced his final soft clipper just before the limiter.
It seems the first plugin in his chain has been a regular hard clipper for some time, without the addition of the Soft Clip Pro in the same instance as the hard ceiling. So I'm wondering if the logarithmic Soft Clip Pro is IN ADDITION TO the final soft clipper on his chain (right before the limiter), or REPLACES it all together.
I am using hard (and sometimes) soft clipping at the start of the chain.
@@panorama_mastering Thanks bud. Just to confirm, is this soft clipping IN ADDITION to the soft clip at the end of the chain?
No this is like I used it here; pretend the clipper is first in my chain, and the limiter last.
I chosed the first one .. Just sounds full
you are moving nicely with the clipping subject, waiting for you to touch on the smashing the clipper hard for color without sounding like you smashing the clipper hard subject next. It's how EDM, Techno Mastering Engineer prepare the track for that purpose, one being using expansion to re-create the peak just to smash it all dead so you can get the best out of the clipper. Luca Pretolesi style. I believe he talked about it with you in the videos. It works alright, but just want to know the science behind it. One more thing, Techno Mastering Engineer like Robert Babicz I noticed didn't use any limiter at all in one of his video series, just stacking up 3 compressors on slow settings and finally smashing the converter super hard, around 6db GR! It's just the result has close to no distortion at all, no pumping, stupid loud and still sounds amazing. Is it technically possible in digital domain ? I don't know any clipper plugin that can handle 6db of an already dense mix without distorting like crazy. Off topic but have you geek out on the TBTech Cenozoix plugin ? it has some cool transient handling features called Clamp and De-Click, I found it useful sometimes, want to know your takes on it.
Have you messed about with Orange Clip yet (or have plans to)?
No plans to :)
Would be cool to see comparison of your AD+ with clip guard vs standardclip or limiting :)
I got rid of my AD+ HOWEVER!
I did detail in a video at some point the mechanics of how AD converters interpret signal and create sample points... might be worth re-hashing some of that information into the context of digital plugins and converter clipping.
@@panorama_mastering That would be super cool! Always been curious why "converter clipping is different and always better" is thrown around so much when you'd think it'd just be math, haha!
Great video!! I just started using a hybrid that does clipping, limiting and a hybrid of both on one setting! Would love to see you test it out! It’s called Flatline 2 by Submission Audio.
I heard the tracks on a shitty soundbar so I can’t make a proper assessment! Will do later tn!
Awesome, thanks for sharing! I'm definitely across and have heard of flatline! Might bet worth it for the future!
Soft Clipping sounds good
Yes it can!
❤❤❤
Can you do a review of the Gold clipper? 🎉
Maybe. I am trying to avoid “reviews”
Nick, do you outsource the Editing? I imagine you would have to with your schedule, and the editor would have to understand the source material to get all the most important parts.
I don't own RX... Which module was that, for looking at the peaks?
de-clip
@@panorama_mastering Thank you.
What headphones do you use?
Apple airpod pro's and mm500s!
Great video. I'm still not understanding how you're calculating the settings on StandardClip with the Soft-Clip Saturator. This seems a bit different from your previous video.
Perhaps a more thorough explanation of the process in StandardClip... and a little slower, please?
I'll second that. Didn't latch on to how you set the percentage.
Should the mixer have clipped the claps before sending for mastering ?.
Not necessarily, no.
The mixer should make the record sound as good and feel as good as they can; P.s I mixed this record like this!!!
@@panorama_mastering Great :) I was just curious :).
Nice video bud
Thanks m808
So, soft clip pro at "min" setting is a hard clipper?
CORRECT!
1:05 I've used quite a few clippers, but I don't understand this second point at all. What is minus threshold in this case? I get that the clipper cuts off the peaks above threshold as the point 1 states, I get that the clipper does nothing to the values bellow the threshold as is stated in point 3, but what's happening in the "Else if" point in between? I thought it might be just the case of threshold being lowered into the -xx levels, but then the video states that the value is set to the -threshold levels if the sample is "bellow" the -threshold level and that makes it quite confusing for me. Hard clipper does nothing to samples that are bellow the threshold but changes values of samples that are bellow -threshold? How? What is the difference between threshold and -threshold?
You have to picture the waveform having a negative and positive portion - with a ‘0’ line down the middle. The clipper has to clip BOTH elements of this.
Waveforms have positive and negative cycles, the samples in the negative cycles need to be treated with the same thresholds/ceilings.
I get it now, thanks!
The last one sounded round , the first was with more HF harmonics and the middle was , the middle of the other two
Interesting choices
are saturators different from soft clippers?
Good question which is hard to answer without leaving grey area.
In principle, yes.
In implementation, sometimes.
In use, not always.
@@panorama_mastering would love a video on that
I hard clipp my stems (vocals, music, and fx) musically and then I throw a limiter that has a soft clipper in it something like the frontier limiter, and let's go to mastering
Nice!
Just at the start, middle one feels like it's clipped only and a bit brighter then the rest, and top one I would guess clip+limit combo...
Grabing popcorns now and getting ready to be completely wrong xD...
interesting choices
@@panorama_masteringYesterday i would swear by my decision, but today middle one felt more rounded of... specially on that reverse hihat hiss (tsk)
Could be biased today as i know the results.
But yeah... experiments are fun,just shows how unreliable I am with sticking to my own decisions :D
Also yesterday on spekears i was not noticing distortion on kicks at first example, today on headphones it really is driving into my ears.
Hoping for next video to be like best times of the year and best days to mix music according to horoscope sign, i dont wanna be doing decisions during bad days.
Jk,Jk
Also what could be a good idea,to give us dowload links with an audio examples for us to decide prior to video release,and you could create a poll like 24hr before droping a video with a followup.
Also sincere apologies for monologues,its just friday, work is finished,and had way too much sugar and caffeine.
Every level trimmed digital limiter with bypassed dynamics is a clipper... ?
If each sample is being adjusted to the threshold indiscriminately (the release is faster than the sample rate) it's effectively the same function as a hard clipper
@@panorama_mastering Yes. Exactly its a digital conversion thang.. my all 5 old samplers havin another affect bt +4dbu booth level and clipp recording
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
thanks m808!
2 nd one was best.
Interesting choice
1st verson
1,3 - clippers, 2 - limiter
Interesting choices
After the "mutual" listen to the resonance on the breath
The second one. The first was too dynamic & the last one sounded too distorted, almost like a hard clip, especially audible on the last kicks
Interesting choices
#2 is more open(a bit too mash brightness), #1 more balanced, #3 did not like
Interesting choices
2nd sounded best to these ears
Intersting choice.
gotta use them in parallel
Possibly so!
Original/clipped/limiter.
Interesting choices
Barely audible but nr 2 took it
Congratulations, the title "Clippers... it's complicated" baited me into clicking, so here I am solely to comment that "No... they're absolutely not." XD
Welcome!
i don't think i'd be able to engineer stuff with cursive singing lol
Cursing?
nope, "cursive singing." look that up on youtube ;) no offense to the artist tho, i was half joking! she is a great singer.@@panorama_mastering
A = a bit steril B = sounded the best more body C= to much 125 to 250 hertz
Interesting choices
@@panorama_mastering yeah, thanks for the great videos. Listening on genelec 8260a, amphions and audeze mm500 and lcd3 :)
Your microphone is always weirdly sounding. :D But I love you videos. It's a love hate relationship.
haha that’s probably a gater you can hear
What’s wrong with it?
@@JMFKorbl :')
Do not oversample the clipper or limiter if you want the detection circuit accurate detect sample peak level
Explain further; I think I'm following your logic, but I don't agree, that doesn't mean I don't want to understand where you're coming from. Please explain.
Every oversample introduce filter which increase peak level, thats fact , you can do simple test with standartclip, wich oversampling you will have higher peak value, to you need enable ceiling to have no overs
@@panorama_mastering maybe to be more clear regarding test..set the standartclip to clip i do not know maybe 1db with no oversmapling and when you compare max true peak with oversampling version it higher, how much depends on material 0,5db or even more..
Wrong. My final limiter (Voxengo Elephant) if I set my ceiling at 0dB, with no oversampling there’s frequent inter sample peaks above 0. This still occurs with 2x oversampling engaged. BUT, as soon as I switch to 4x I no longer get any peaks above 0. This is always the case. So I always stay on 4x over sampling for my final limiter.
@@HollerAtcherBoi Hi - oversampling is:
- inserting zeros in between samples
- low-pass filtering of the result.
In non-signal processing terms the low-pass filter interpolates between the samples with a curve that is only allowed to have a small slope (slow change-rate). In some cases - e.g. when the sample values rise and then suddenly drop, the low-pass will cause the interpolation curve to overshoot and create higher values than the sample values.
2 is the loudest, so it sound best to me
Interesting choice
Sounds like the bass is side-chained and ducking in the mix to me? Could just be shitty YT audio though ;)
2nd
Interesting choice
on my iphone speaker@@panorama_mastering
bro i have no idea what u talking about 😢
Where did I loose you? Let me know!
Chopping off audio transient peaks with different tools, thus being able to increase the materials overall volume before red lining/ digital hard clip occurs.
All three snippets essentially sounded the same
unless you are listening from a phone or laptop the difference is quite significant
@@mikeholm4455 You wouldn't notice a difference if you weren't told there was a difference. The placebo effect is clearly in full effect on audio youtube.
I 100% could hear a difference in the harmonic profiles on my phone
Listen to the top of the kick
The transients that touch the threshold are the only thing affected, and it’s super obvious if you know what’s happening
Obviously this guy is lying
He's using outboard gears, that does all the work.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It's all LANDR... audio technology, knowledge and application is all smoke and mirrors.
🤡 🤡 🤡
Sorry, But very confusing and on all ends wrong Explained Information and totally wrong executed tasks! You are using HARD Clipping and SOFT Clipping totally wrong and it appears like you haven´t read the Menu! Or YOU just use the Words Hard / Soft Clipping interchangeably.
First Problem: The Free Clip Plugin you are using is NOT a HARD CLIPPING PLUGIN at All! It has a "Hard Clipp" MODE, BUT this mode is still SOFT CLIPPED! Your Signal is Not HARD Cutted!
Means: You are Still getting very much Distortion from this Mode. Because the whole Plugin is in its entirety just a SOFT CLIPPING PLUGIN!
Second Problem: From Minute 3:50 in Your Video to the End you are testing "HARD CLIPPING." NO YOU ARE NOT! YOU DIDN`T turn ON the HARD Clipping MODE at ALL!
You were just experimenting the whole Video with the Soft Clipping Mode from the PLUGIN. So the Only thing you did was basically compare the different Soft Clipping Modes in terms of Saturation.
Conclusion: Guys its not thaaat complicated. I talked to the Standard Clip Inventor here in Germany @ Berlin. But You can also read all Information about this in the Menu.
CLIPPING is not a new Topic. Its is an old technic that was used on analog times and now its also standard in digital times. BUT Somehow it became in RUclips a new Hype like it would be something New and very Complicated Topic. It is not ! In a nutshell: HARD CLIPPING, - Cuts the audio at the clipping level WITHOUT soft-saturation. This is often used to trim a few peaks from the signal before it enters a limiter, for more transparent limiting. SOFT CLIPPING, Clips the audio with different Clipping Curves and you will get a clipped Signal with more Saturation. If you wanna use SOFT or HARD Clipping depends on your Style of Music. Soft Clipping is perfect for EDM because of the Saturation. For a Ballade probably HARD CLIPPING could fit better. --> NO or way less Saturation. But sorry @panorama_mastering you miss Used those Plug Ins and then you miss explained what you were doing, assuming you were in the right SOFT OR HARD CLIPPING Mode. If you wanna HARD CLIPP your Stuff you have to enable the HARD CLIPPING MODE in the Standard Clip PLUG IN.
I understand where you're coming from.
My interpretation, is that whenever a cieling is set; (-2dB) and the clipper take ALL samples that exceed that sample value and re-asign it to -2dB, that is hard clipping, any samples below that ceiling, that are scaled by way of mathematical function take the soft clipping portion.
In fact, if you set the soft clippers to 0% it's hard clipping.
I used to think the exact same things you're saying until others pointed it out to me; that 0% on softclip is in fact hard clipping.