ectogemia Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 Yep, I know there's an entire Google out there, but I'm looking for some bona fide OCR opinions. Does anyone have any recommendations for a high-quality soft clipper plugin? Any experiences with bad ones? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argle Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 Mm, I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between soft clipping and saturation, but I'm a big fan of Massey Tape Head. It gets used in every track I make. The demo version is free and nagless but is mono and doesn't remember settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 (edited) Soft-clipping: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/522822-post2.html Similar to soft knee limiting, but more tolerant, I believe. I actually prefer soft knee limiting because I find it a good balance between hard knee and soft clipping. Lets me mix loudly without overcompression. This is probably the piece of info I found most useful to illustrating what I just said above. The "secret" to mixing loudly: it's very popular to use compressors with soft clipping during the tracking process, especially when tracking drums, because drums are often one of the most dominant elements with very high recorded dynamic range. Some engineers say compressors are the best tools for getting high dynamic range and that's absolutely true even though it is completely against the nature of what a compressor really does. Above I described what happens in practise, now I will describe how the dynamic range can be improved by using compressors with soft clipping properties. When you track instruments that are very different in transient response[,] you will easily loose signal noise ratio if the dynamic instruments take up a lot of dB on the mix and they are dominant on the mix. When you lose signal noise ratio you actually also lose dynamic range. The reason why compressors with soft clipping properties are so good at increasing the dynamic range is because they allow you to control the transient response so well during the tracking process that you are able to mix the song in such a way that you will not get a bad final overall signal noise ratio[,] and the sound is still very natural sounding. This in combination with the correct track volume balance creates the perception of high dynamic range, because when limiting[,] the overall signal noise ratio is still at max level[,] which means you can more easily feel the dynamics in the mix when the mix is loud. So, in short, my recommendation is TLs-Pocket Limiter. Free, simple, effective. Edited February 19, 2014 by timaeus222 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 (edited) Mm, I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between soft clipping and saturation, but I'm a big fan of Massey Tape Head. It gets used in every track I make. The demo version is free and nagless but is mono and doesn't remember settings. Best way to explain saturation is explaining where it actually comes from. In the days of analog recording, if you overloaded the maximum amplitude signal record-able on your tape (two track or what have you), the signal would, instead of being accurately depicted through the tape's magnetic flux, essentially make a "square wave" as any signal amplitude going above the maximum would just have a straight line of flux on the tape. This meant you were "saturating" the tape; you're pumping its maximum capacity of magnetic flux. Saturation in modern plug-ins is the same idea, it's pumping the gain to crash flat line at the maximum ceiling. In digital production, though, strict saturation (hard-clipping) sounds awful, because the math is so precise and perfect that the audio approximates an actual square wave. Real tape saturation wouldn't sound as harsh, and different tape materials would get slightly different sounds. This is why we have tape saturation plug-ins; what people do is the analyze the mathematical signal behavior of what tape saturation actually does to a signal, and then devise a mathematical model to approximate it. They implement it in VST code, and now you buy it for like $50 to have your song sound like it was overloading a tape machine. It's a bit ironic to do this, because saturating your tape was generally seen as bad back in those days, similar to breaking 0 db in your DAW. Now, it's an effect instead of bad mixing practice. Because lolloudnesswars Edited February 19, 2014 by Neblix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ectogemia Posted February 19, 2014 Author Share Posted February 19, 2014 (edited) Well, I'm not looking for one so much for drum processing as I am for mastering. I know that soft clipping is one of the many secret weapons used to win the loudness war, often a soft clipper in place of a limiter, so that's my goal, really. For drum processing, I use transient shapers as needed on the individual parts and some compression on the bus, and I'm totally satisfied with that. And just my $0.02, but I never much like TLs Pocket Limiter despite everyone around here seeming to recommend it It's a good freebie plugin, but at least to my ear, I really like the sound of industry standard limiters a lot more. Waves L2 omg Argle, soft clipping is basically just limiting but with an algorithm that limits the distortion created by transients going over the threshold too much with some magical algorithm I couldn't possibly understand or care to learn about, haha. Basically, you can boost your mix's RMS while mastering more with a soft clipper than you can with a standard limiter before getting distortion artifacts from the compression. It's useful for aggressive dance music. Edited February 19, 2014 by ectogemia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 Well, TLs sounds good to my ear, and I know nothing about premium plugins, but better ears than mine have recommended Limiter No.6 (One of the six is a clipper with a knee parameter), and Melda's MLimiter looks like it has strong potential in that area as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 (edited) Well, TLs sounds good to my ear, and I know nothing about premium plugins, but better ears than mine have recommended Limiter No.6 (One of the six is a clipper with a knee parameter), and Melda's MLimiter looks like it has strong potential in that area as well. Limiter No. 6 Reviews MLimiter Reviews Elatua Limiter seems good, as it can do M/S limiting too, though it's apparently 90 euros. ThrillseekerVBL is free, so it couldn't hurt to try it. It looks great and had a lot of technical know-how behind its programming. Edited February 20, 2014 by timaeus222 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nase Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 ThrillseekerVBL is free, so it couldn't hurt to try it. It looks great and had a lot of technical know-how behind its programming. I just downloaded that the other day. Seems great for saturation; one of the less subtle VoS plugins. (ThrillseekerXTC on the other hand...whatever that does besides slight EQ boosts is beyond my ears. I thought i heard it one evening, the next day i didn't ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nase Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Just a little update: Thrillseeker VBL is really good. I'm probably overusing it right now, like to slap in onto pretty much everything. Nice and simple to add some warmth with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael_Lochlann Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 T-racks soft clipper does it fer me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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