This changed how I use clippers in mastering forever

I use the hard clip function on StandardClip, it's in the drop down under soft clip. You mention that this is a comparison between hard and soft clipping but I only see soft clipping with different settings. Maybe there's something I'm missing? In all the examples the track labeled "soft" always has louder transients and louder rms, as can be seen on the plugin's fantastic output meters. Since we're clipping an entire song I'd say that volume matching would be really important here. I can hear differences.. just hard to tell how much of it is a volume difference. Great video, I'm going to have to experiment more with this plugin.

nice

thanks for reading for us. :-)

Cheers Nic these videos are really helping my mixs

"enjoy myself a bit too much" haha I love this guy

I've owned this plugin for so long and never thought to even click the graph 🤣

I really appreciate this video. I was always wondering why illangelo always use soft clip pro on the master bus. Now i get it.

great info!

As far as i discovered percentage slider in SIR Standardclip, my masters finally come to an industry standard LUFS levels. However, sometimes it makes soft songs sound a bit too spiky and edgy, so i'm trying to be careful with that. It goes well on rock mixes, but r'n'b and pop shouldn't sound that abrasive, so i rather prefer to combine it with hard clipping and slightly pumped up limiting to keep the vibe smooth and deep.

Really helpful advice! I too found that clipping later in the chain affects transient shape a bunch (that we work so hard to control). Clipping upfront's better. because it really reduces how much work the limiters and compressors downline have to do. The technique in this video lets me "have my cake" by compressing the top few Dbs and leaving the body untouched.

Soft clipping is not that gentle like the name suggest when I want to clip (shave) I just want to do that and that only.

This is awesome. Thank you for sharing with us!! 🙏🏻🙌🏻

you're 15 years younger now hahaha

What you are doing is stupid, because its creating phase errors to the max. You talk like your IQ is around 15.

Do you know how god damn useful that was?!

Would you recommend using this technique on my mixbus before I send to mastering? I'm always concerned that the mastering engineer will try applying even more clipping.

say arnold, I'm hearing neighbah. it's neighbor....

Hi Nic, now i wanted to ask a silly question here.. Is there another clipper that is able to do this type of processing as well

Why not clipping drumbuss instead? most of peaks are from kick and snare

This channel is a game changer...

A HUGE thank YOU!!!

I was just watching an AU5 vid about this experimental FFT based "multiband" compressor called Spectral Compressor, and when he showed one use case he found for it, I immediately thought of you! This thing is wild, you can use it as a clipper, but as it can compress with an infinite ratio with 0 attack and 0 release time, and subsequently distort each FFT band separately (if set to as low an FFT window size as your PC can handle, and to have as little overlap of the FFT windows as possible) this means digital clipping with essentially zero intermodulation distortion!! It's essentially a multiband compressor with close to infinite bands...

Other VSTs employ this tech behind the scenes too (like the Sonible smart comp and I think sooth), but this thing has so so many other controls and interesting use cases, where as smart comp etc. are designed to take away control and automate the processing for you, this thing is the polar opposite and wants you to get fully hands on with every variable. It can do exactly what sooth can just with more controls (al be it with more time spent getting to the result, making these other smart processors still have their place tbh). You can use it to take the S/C signal from another sound source, imprint it so it removes them frequencies from the main sound, invert the phase polarity and overlay it on the original signal, creating a delta signal, and then have only the frequencies that are in both sounds play and have one sound with the tonal characters of another and a bunch of other really really crazy stuff, it's really wild.

It's free as well! A bit fiddly to install as it's a github project, but well worth it if you really want to get granular with your processing. They have a bunch of other cool looking free plugs too, I've not had time to check the others out yet though, as as soon as he said intermodulation distortion free clipping, I had to come over here haha!.

so, what happend to dynamics.... clipping is killing dynamic and again the loundesswar is back!

Tried Airwindows clippers, Sir? Thanks for this!

Do you think the SIR Starndard Clip is the best Clipper?

What you seem to pay zero attention to is the fact that, when you compare the "soft pro" clipping transfer curve (in Plugin Doctor or whatever it is) to the hard clipping transfer curve, the "soft pro" line up to the threshold is off to the left of the hard clipping transfer curve.

This means that even below the threshold, there is already a volume boost i.e. the volume of the signal going out is louder than it was going into the processor. So it doesn't just clip, it also boosts "into" the clipping part, which is a no-no because it alters the signal in ways it shouldn't.

In typical soft clippers e.g. using the hyperbolic tangent, the transfer curve will always be "inside" the linear hard clipping transfer curve, even if the input is boosted "into" the clipping. The ideal would be to stay fully linear i.e. "on" the hard clipping transfer curve until the "clipping range" begins, in which the peaks are squashed.

Great video Mate!, you really blew my mind with this, I've been using Standard Clip for a couple of years now and I didn't knew this, thank you very much!. BTW, one question, how do you enable the "side metering things" on RX, the ones that you use to find the value of the body of your song? 👀

OK. So, you are taking the amplitude delta between the loudest peak (-5.6) and the average loudest level of the rest of the music (-9.6) which is 4 dB and telling the clipper that the max ceiling for just the amplitude between -9.6 and -5.6 should be -7.6. Is that right? And the closer the amplitude gets to the actual peak of -5.6, the more clipping gets applied to that amplitude - so a transient of -5.6 will be soft-clipped to -7.6 but a transient of -6.6 will clipped even more softly/gradually. Is that right?!!

The thing is, Sony was doing this soft knee transfer function 30 years ago in its limiter, with look-ahead. But was 16 bit i/0 only and no oversampling. The net result: upwards comp, raises overtones (and noise), often perceived as "warmth". (with the exception of aliasing IMD).

Finally, someone made sense of that dial.
I can hear clear differences, particularly when trying to get an already loud source up to competitive levels.
I read the manual but it really didn't click, until ... Thanks a lot!

Excellent that you point this out. Now try staging the soft clipping with varying transfer curves the same way on especially on the heavy transient elements earlier in the mix to simulate pushing into transformers. Even try putting one clipper berfore your 2-bus processing and then again before your limiter to emulate D2A, outboard soft xlipping and then A2D. Better low end and overall body. Prove me wrong 😜

bruv, what's the song name? :)

All during my life clipping was the worst mistake. Fast forward 2020s: "use this clipper on everything"

There are tons of great clippers with a soft clipping function, including Izotope's Maximizer, TDR's Limiter6 GE, and Newfangled's Saturate. Tons of options to play with for soft clipping :)

love ur vibes and the knowledge u shared with us. and it's much better to listen to a human being capable to talk the talk while walking the walk without the fast edits and adhd bs. subbed!

Thx for that one again! Nice videos as always! Just being watching videos from Baphometrix about the oversampling and ceiling in the Standardclip plugin : "The problem with oversampled clippers". I'm not a big fan of those method of shaving everything to be as LOUD as possible, but... it's always good to see how each engineer works.
It may serve you. Video a bit fastidious, but it makes sens at some point. If i got it right, the idea is to avoid unnecessary oversampling and "second" ceiling, to keep a transparent mix, and mostly save overall CPU. Mostly when using it on single tracks or busses... Oversampling doesn't seems to be always at its best on clippers or limiters.
By the way, do you think the ceiling is of any use if we are not using the oversampling option? Cause it creates some aliasing, and seems to be, mostly, if not only, for the overshoots... CREATED by the oversampling. Thx man for all those sharing jewels! Keep on shining!

Thank you so much for sharing this, the results speaks for itself. Cheers man!!!

Imagine all this music production knowledge for such shitty music lol

Excellent, thanks!

Wow, what a difference!

That clipper wont save that track

Very interesting feature. Might get this one. Thanks for the video. It's hard to see you pressing the solo button. I suggest you use some sign on screen so we can see more easily when you switch. Cheers

So I can figure out true peak, but how do I figure out where the body of the instrumentation is without izotope RX ?

Can someone explain this in one or two easy to understand sentences?

Standard Clip is one of those plug ins that just get better and better the longer you own it.

Ngl I was very skeptical of what you were actually talking about until I heard the playback. The result is clear as day. Thanks for the cheat code 👍🏼

never mentioned which clipper, looks like eventide interface

compressor with expander, eurika

Interesting, I always hard clip before the limiter, but sure I'd like to test this out at the beginning of the chain to see how the rest of gears interact with the transients.
Does anyone know how to activate these top and bottom dB bars around the waveform within RX10? Is it on all the versions?