Hard Clipping Case Study (Hard vs Soft vs Compression vs Limiting)

[@chrt_aaron]

I really appreciate how you broke down the case study on hard clipping vs. soft clipping and other alternatives like compression and limiting. It's great to see real-world applications, especially when you highlight the trade-offs in transparency. I found the following points particularly useful: 1. The contrast between hard and soft clipping: The way you demonstrated how hard clipping affects only the peak samples while soft clipping touches more of the signal below the threshold was really enlightening. The transfer function explanation also helped in understanding why the tonal changes occur with soft clipping. 2. Transparency as the goal: Your focus on maintaining transparency and reducing artifacts, especially in a context where the peaks last only 1/12,000th of a second, makes the case for hard clipping very clear. It's a reminder that sometimes the most minimal alteration to achieve headroom can be the best approach, depending on the material. 3. Delta listening and visual analysis: Being able to listen to the differences using the Delta signal, and then visually analyzing the impact in RX, solidified the technical understanding. I liked how you compared each processor's effect on the waveform, especially the insight about the limiter's lookahead function. 4. Encouraging feedback and open-mindedness: The way you engage with the community to call you out if needed and to remain open to different processes, rather than demonizing any particular tool. It keeps the discussion productive and promotes learning. All in all, your breakdown made it easy to grasp the nuances of peak management, and I'm looking forward to applying some of these techniques in my own sessions. Thanks for sharing this detailed analysis and having the best newsletter to date!

[@KingOfTings1]

listening off my iphone speakers sitting in front studio monitors 😭😂😂

[@Wizardofvoz2]

I am an old Boomer. First session November 1975. Major label stuff (US) back in another lifetime. Your content is excellent.

[@ritchxmusic]

Nice one bro. Appreciate your 'data driven' no nonsense approach

[@panorama_mastering]

No worries!!

[@ProductionAdvice]

Hi Nick, Nice demo and I like that you recognise people might misinterpret the extent to which you use clipping based on your videos, and warn them against over-using it. For me though, this is all still too analytical and technical. Once in a blue moon I get a mix that sounds so good I want my mastering processing to be completely transparent, but most of the time I’m looking instead to deliberately change it - to enhance the feel, emotion, musicality etc - and I know you’re the same. So most of the time I couldn’t care less what the individual peaks are doing or which type of clipping is least audible - it’s more about which one sounds and feels best. I appreciate the point of this video was to show that hard clipping can be very transparent on the right kind of material, which is a valid point - I just think it’s worth reminding people that most of the time the goal in mastering isn’t to be transparent at all. For me, it’s all about “invisibly enhancing”. I want to make positive changes to the audio, some of them quite significant sometimes, without anyone noticing how I did it - or even that it happened at all. People might think it sounds like a paradox but it’s not about minimal changes, or leaving the majority of the audio in-touched, it’s about making worthwhile changes that enhance the music and don’t catch anyone’s attention while they’re doing it. The example in this video achieves a mostly clean increase in level (either by hard clipping or limiting) and has absolutely no other benefit. To me, that’s not really achieving anything useful - because the level increase will inevitably be removed by either normalisation or the user’s volume control. If it reduces the amount of limiting that’s needed, that might be beneficial, I guess - unless the limiting actually sounds cool… Anyway I know you know all this, I just think there are so many more important aspects to mastering to talk about than just how we reduce the peaks !

[@panorama_mastering]

Spot on! I listened to one of your recent podcasts on Clipping. It was great! Re: the nature of this content. This is well over technical, but for me this helps fill the knowledge and context gaps I feel like I miss in other videos. I’ll move forward to regular programming and get some more sessions and fun stuff on the channel soon. ;)

[@cefk9944]

@@panorama_mastering I actually like the nerdy and technical stuff .. a lot :)

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@panorama_mastering All good, glad you liked the clipping episode 👍

[@iggswanna1248]

bro u are the absolute best sound scientist. i learn a lot with your stuff

[@mugwood]

I think the limiter difference at 8m in your video is maybe not lookahead - I think it’s stereo linking which you have at 0 independence… so the peak on the right channel is pulling down the peak on the left channel. Could be interesting to look at stereo linking at some point, as that’s a topic that doesn’t get a lot of love but is really important for stereo!

[@mugwood]

… and also comparing to the hard clipper which has effectively 100% channel independence…. just a thought :)

[@panorama_mastering]

You may be correct and that’s an oversight on my behalf! When I get back to the studio I’ll check it out. I did do some videos on the low-end drift caused by unlinking your limiters

[@DaftyBoi412]

Interesting. It's funny, cos it's often thought by many people that hard clipping is the more drastic approach to take, when in reality, when used lightly it's actually the least destructive, as it only effects what goes past the threshold and nothing else (no attack or releace, before or after the moment that passes the threshold etc. ).

[@panorama_mastering]

Spot on

[@markcole4001]

Thanks for this highly educational video that answers a lot of questions.

[@Barncore]

Elite video. Thanks mate

[@deadnoises]

This is great info, thanks for the insight on how each processor works. I've been using hard clippers to control peaks before a compressor for a while now and it works wonders.

[@CoWL-Music]

Hey Nick Thanks for the video! I’m wondering if you could do a video on why soft-clippers produce harmonics when used and activated on any waveform. Thanks again for your work and much love and appreciation from Canada! 🙏😊

[@quizacgmail]

Hard clipper produces square wave - much nastier effect in terms of harmonics

[@murrkywaters]

look into FFTs and the relationship between the harmonics (frequency domain) and the wave shape (time domain), honestly between that and the laplace transform the whole world of waves and information will open up.

[@DerekPower]

Finally! I knew there was going to be a proper and intelligent response to ... certain KZbin peers ;) =]

[@panorama_mastering]

Lots of intelligence KZbinrs out there. This simply contextualised my approach. Everyone rolls differently, and that’s the beauty of learning from this information landscape.

[@DerekPower]

@@panorama_mastering Very true. At the same time, it’s refreshing to see information presented in a way that doesn’t involve bad faith or antagonism. That’s what I meant =]

[@lukasborucki6546]

Great vid!!! Useful as always :) Have a great day everyone!!!!

[@jcpuga]

Mastering APwasn't saying that soft clipping isn't useful, but rather that analog clippers work differently from digital clippers. Specifically, a digital clipper deletes sound data, while an analog clipper reintroduces that data in a different way. I think he's approaching it from an analog perspective, where it doesn't make sense to compare the two directly. However, others are looking at it through the lens of the marketed term 'soft clipper.' AP Mastering is essentially saying that it's a form of distortion or saturation

[@ramjac]

It would be interesting to add RX's Loudness control to your case study. I find it reduces the peaks leaving their shape in tact, and without employing any release tails.

[@Fexiheit]

Thanks :) Love these nerdy videos :)

[@zillahgoodmaen6783]

Interesting Case Study

[@panorama_mastering]

Thanks m808

[@alexbvndi]

Have you ever tried clipping only the sides? It’s phenomenal how much depth and width the mix gains! I prefere doing this with ash from acustica audio, as it has a very nice control for clipping the side informations

[@mixphantom0101]

I only use clipping before compressors when mixing. Clipping transients before a limiter in mastering is kind of a redundant exercise as most digital limiters already do that - lookahead enables a limiter to react before the transient, which hits a "brick wall" and the attack speed/time doesn't engage until the signal drops below the "brick wall" setting. FabFilter Pro-L2 does this, so setting the lookahead to zero and the attack to it's slowest setting turns Pro-L2 into a clipper - basically the "brick wall" flattens the signal without shaping and with a super slow attack time no shaping will occur as the next transient will start it all over again.

[@Barncore]

Clipping before limiters is not redundant. Clippers REMOVE signal, while limiters COMPRESS signal. With compression, the whole signal gets turned down, not just the peaks. With clipping, just the peaks get shaved off. Removing peaks before compression allows you to do more transparent compression, because the peaks don't trigger the compression as much (which typically can cause pumping)

[@1loveMusic2003]

I use clippers for transient heavy audio. Hard for fast transients and soft for longer transients. Limiter for audio with no heavy transients. Unless I want to tame the impact of transients.

[@StevieBoyesmusic]

Hard clipping cuases a corner discontinuity in the first derivative of the transfer function, which is why it sounds bad if you push it to audible levels, especially with no attempt to remove aliasing. Of course small amounts may sound very transparent on some sounds. Clipping is also equivalent to brickwall limiting with instant attack and release times.

[@VeziCaEu]

transparent indeed... just like your video's :)

[@happyshadow]

Careful clipping stuff dude.... you MIGHT BLOW UP ALL THE PA SYSTEMS IN THE WORLD

[@EdPettersen]

So, are you hard clipping in RX and soft clipping in the session or both in the session now?

[@Chiefmonks]

both with StandardClip

[@EdPettersen]

@Chiefmonks Good to know, thanks. I thought in earlier videos it was hard clipped in RX first and then imported into the session.

[@Chiefmonks]

@@EdPettersen nono, he uses RX to only graphically see how much -db would be when you shave off a handfull of peaks. The De-Clip mode in RX lets you see a line that you can move down or up and it tells you the threshold that you later set in the StandardClip plugin

[@EdPettersen]

@@Chiefmonks Yeah, I get that, but you can also hard clip first in RX. Especially if you need to save CPU (which fortunately, I don't). The hard clip feature in Standard Clip is great.

[@panorama_mastering]

All in the session with standard clip

[@JohannesCarpenter]

Would there be an advantage to shaping the transient with a compressor ever so slightly to have them uniformly hit the clipper, let’s say at 3ms to minimize audible clipping distortion?

[@musicproducer3569]

As long as you understand the product of each process, there are no rules. It's all about the end result.

[@BoldSound-f2f]

Your gap between the teeths 21 and 11 represents how wide should low end be in mixes

[@bakerlefdaoui6801]

Dope

[@ItsMetabtw]

There’s nothing wrong with the info you’ve presented on hard clipping over the last year+. If someone wants to push hard clipping into the rms of their track then It’s going to get pretty crunchy. That’s not the same use case as cleaning up some unnecessary peak content. Thats not on you if someone misunderstands the distinction

[@ghfjfghjasdfasdf]

For the algorithm

[@panorama_mastering]

This actually was part of a mini-newsletter series on mastering I was writing. The timing just opened up ;)

[@ghfjfghjasdfasdf]

🤟 on

[@MarkRoss-v4y]

❣

[@jacquesancillon6635]

Hi /// case study .... it's very good to specify this, and indeed, it should not be an essential or always present rule. On the other hand, I am interested in all kinds of case studies that would be offered to me ... ( Communication or marketing courses for mastering do not really interest me ) ... In fact it will never be my business, so I am content to only develop my ability to hear or transpose solutions on my own creations. thank you Mr. Nico for reading me . Congratulations on opening the master class !!!!

[@SG-4u]

You say your goal is the most transparent peak control. But that wouldn't be the hard clipper. That would be the limiter (depending on what limiter I guess). With the hard clipper you are fundamentally changing the waveform (by chopping it off), with the limiter you are merely turning the volume of the peak down (which is more in line with your goal of most transparent). Also, the delta of the hard clipper is showing you what you are chopping off, the delta on the limiter is showing you what you are lowering the volume on, those are different things. That said, some people like the distortion from a hard clipper.

[@panorama_mastering]

The limiter is a perfect alternative. But as soon as you add time constants into the equation the linearity of the transfer can shift (plot your limiter on a hammerstein graph and you’ll see the low end shift)

[@sobhhi]

For the record, clippers (soft and hard) and limiters all “fundamentally change the waveform.“

[@SG-4u]

Not wanting to start a debate over the word “fundamentally”, but turning the volume down on a peak is far different and less destructive than chopping the peak off. Take a sine wave and turn the volume of it up or down and it hasn’t fundamentally changed, but clip it (pretty much turning it into a square wave) and it is now radically different and sounds that way.

[@sobhhi]

@@SG-4u chopping off a peak is exactly the same thing as turning down the volume. The difference is just how quickly and accurately it happens

[@SG-4u]

Incorrect. It’s called clipping for a reason. Go and look (and listen) at what it does to a wave. Listen to a guitar distortion pedal, that distortion is (usually) the sound of waves getting chopped. I know you can hear the difference between a sine wave and a square wave, but if you aren’t familiar, play around with a soft synth where you can see the wave form and change it’s shape from one that is round to one that is clipped, it’s a dramatically different sound. Lowering volume is not distortion, clipping is.

[@ILOVEDRAGO]

5:41 you are still on hard clipper here, mate

[@panorama_mastering]

Hey, this is poor editing on my behalf, before the transition zooms in check the left of the screen the soft-clip is actually solo'd but the plugin from the hard clipper is still in view. I just checked the FCPX session to tripple check, and it is the soft clipper monitoring. Bad fuck up on my end, sorry!