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Recommendations on soft-clipper plugin?


ectogemia
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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 by timaeus222
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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 by Neblix
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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 :P 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 by ectogemia
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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 by timaeus222
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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 :) )

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