How the world’s top songs are actually louder than yours

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This video is about using clipping and clippers in your mixes to get more headroom, and more punchy and dynamic mixes. We compare hard clipping, soft clipping, and even the difference between clipping and limiting.
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[@audioedges]

Download the Home Mixing Cheatsheet here! 👉 www.audioedges.com/homemixingcheatsheet

[@r0bzmusic777]

do you use the limiter after the clipper to make the song louder ???

[@audioedges]

@@r0bzmusic777 often I do!!

[@r0bzmusic777]

@@audioedges so what is the point of using a clipper if you use the limiter after ?? if you are not increasing the db with the clipper and instead after clipping you go to a limiter

[@boristubeti6776]

Finally understand what clipping actually is. Thank you 🙏🏻

[@SantaAnaCreations]

Seriously yall take rules in audio too seriously. Experiment! Do what they tell u not to and find out. I never listened to people or experts and i have always had louder cleaner mixes then everyone. Plus i come from the tape era so i have always experimented and gotten great results. Stop limiting yourself pun intended

[@Michaelvan-x1r]

Dude!!! I TOTALLY agree with ya!! When the heck will we all finally realize music is an ART..... not CHEMISTRY...... ok.. MAYBE we can get an idea from the KZbin "experts", but you have ears for a reason. USE them, and make the art you want. They say: "But your music sounds bad".... answer: " That's how I wanted it to sound!!!" Just my humble opinion 😉

[@junie502]

Agreed 💯

[@leadfoot64]

I recently came to learn and understand this as well, after decades of digital mixing.. digital needs this! It IS the actual missing ingredient in digital recording and IS the magic trick that makes everything better and louder, and most importantly more analog sounding! This guy is absolutely correct about this. For me, the drum bus was always the culprit as far as peaks and I tried unsuccessfully for years using compression and limiting only to ruin otherwise great mixes. I use a plug-in called K-klip and it is the holy grail of plug ins for this use case. I'm able to get back 5-6db's of headroom on the drum bus alone, and another 4db's on the master bus with no loss of dynamics, in fact they sound way better! Now you can use your final compression and limiting the way they are supposed to be and not hitting them so hard. Sorry for the long post, but this is the difference between smashed small sounding masters, and huge open dynamic sound. I finally was able to smile after mastering my mixes and not be wondering why I couldn't achieve the dynamics and loudness of commercial reference material.

[@hcl8836]

Your comments about not reducing the dynamic range with a clipper is a false statement in my opinion. If you chop off peaks you actually reduce the difference between the loudest and the quiet parts of your mix. Limiters rearrange the signal above the threshold so it fits under the threshold. How transparent and without artifacts the result is depends on the kind of algorithm for the rebuild. And clipping is a very instant kind of „algorithm“ … hard clipping by pure definition doesn’t recreate the signal on a lower level and gives a kind of square wave result at the threshold. Soft clipping is different and doesn’t produce a flat line. It kind of rounds out the waveform. Maybe in modern clippers hard limiting is also not producing pure flat lines (didn’t checked it). So in itself a clipper is nothing else than a „limiting tool“ against a given threshold but with a different kind of „algorithm“ that is mostly defined by it‘s „instant“ reaction. And it does reduce the dynamic range when it‘s working. The perceived dynamic range alteration is more subtle when it starts working because the time span is lower. Over all good video. 😊

[@campar1043]

if im using a saturation plugin do i also need a clipping plugin since saturation kind of rounds off the transients already?

[@hodshonf]

MY confusion with the Clipping Craze was simply definition I understood clipping to be when your signal goes above 0dBfs: bad - especially on the master bus THIS type of CLIPPING is like clipping your bangs Makes complete sense now Thank you thank you thank you A Clipper is my next buy After the new Ibanez Fretless bass

[@mileshurst9823]

Gclip is great and free

[@audioedges]

So glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah, it was the same for me for a while, haha. I find using it this way opens up some great possibilities for a mix with just the new headroom alone, and some great sounds you can get out of clippers too. Thanks so much!

[@snubdawg1386]

my mixes are still shit...but since i learned baphometrix clip-to-zero technic, loudness is no problem anymore

[@bassinblue]

If your mixes are bad, then 9 times out of 10, it's because you're not letting the track breathe. Either your tracks have too much energy, or no energy at all. The importance of dynamic, is to give the listener a chance to hear where things are, like a riser, or a drop. If things are loud from the get go, then the listener will not have the chance to hear where things are. Another essential thing is, separation. You can either separate via EQ or panning. Flesh out each audio component so it can live with other elements, then separate them further with reverb, which can act as 'glue'. This gives space and dimension to your track. I hope this info was helpful.

[@santiagorestrepo6063]

WOW guy I'm following hundreds of producer youtubers...you are now in my top 5👍🏼

[@audioedges]

Thanks so much, that means the world! So great to have you here! 🙏

[@GoodxJ]

👍🏼

[@audioedges]

😊🎧🤘

[@mixedbysuede]

This is a great video bro and actually brought my master from -11 LUFS to -8.4!! I appreciate you man

[@hithere4289]

before clipping, where you distorting if going louder than -11?

[@lordberly]

​@@hithere4289Mostly yes if you push the limiter more than 3dB of Gain Reduction.

[@SantaAnaCreations]

Ive gon up to -5 and still sounded pretty good hella loud but not bad

[@audioedges]

Thanks so much! Really glad to hear that! 😊

[@TheArkhamRebellion]

I've had Gold Clip a few months now and it's amazing, definitely something to be used with caution as it's easy to overdo it. But there's something special about it that's for sure.

[@audioedges]

Nice! Yeah, even just a bit of the Gold processing can do wonders.

[@skogangcobra4604]

Here because of Andrew, great information.

[@DeltaWhiskeyBravo13579]

I have both SIR Standard Clip and Schwabe Gold Clip, and then LVC Clipped-MAX. Gold Clip is very versatile and sounds great. The others are good as well, they just didn't get the gold medal. I'm running Gold Clip into a Nugen ISL2 limiter on my Studio One+ 6.5 2 bus.

[@audioedges]

Nice, that’s awesome! Gold Clip definitely is a favourite for me too. I’m posting a video soon specifically dedicated to Gold Clip. Such great tools. 🙏

[@leogallagher2736]

Awesome lil demo!

[@leogallagher2736]

FYI the soft clip modes on StandardClip are hard clipping when the saturation slider is set to 0 :)

[@audioedges]

Thanks!

[@ephraimwarrior6766]

kool its kinda like audio tape.

[@lalocura1828]

Just series clip it.

[@camstanley]

That was a very informative video! I have a question though, would you typically use clipping on just the drums or the whole mix bus? Can't imagine it'd sound good on something like vocals or an acoustic guitar, if you're aiming for perceived loudness / head room.

[@leogallagher2736]

It's better to have "many little clips" instead of "one big clip". (Shoutout to the Clip-to-Zero KZbin series by Baphometrix for a deep dive on this). Personally I would recommend clipping each track in the drum bus individually (clipping just a little bit in a transparent way), and then also clip the whole drum bus at the end if needed. The same can be done for every track in your project: clipping transparently in tiny amounts (so it shaves off unnecessary peaks without compromising too much of the original sound), and then putting a clipper on each group where multiple sounds sum together (at the end of the signal chain for each group). For a clipper on a group of tracks, it's nice to just let the clipper's ceiling sit at 0db and take care of any peaks from summing tracks in that group. You're right that for tonal material like vocals, guitar, sub bass, etc, clipping is less effective since it will have more audible distortion. On something like a hihat, you will just get a little "spit" of distortion with the transient that can even sound pleasant. With a vocal (for example), it's a sustained tone instead of a short transient - so it will clip past the ceiling for a longer duration and therefore have more audible distortion. For tonal material, a track limiter is often the better choice to control dynamic range :)

[@Studio22mix]

@@leogallagher2736 yepp, Baphometrix videos are really amazing. His approach works only completely ‘in the box’ tho. I mix analog but also use his technique, I use busses extensively, like a drum bus into a drum&base bus then into a pre-master bus then into the two bus. All busses do a tiny bit of clipping so the meter on my masterbus compressor is just barely moving 👌🏼

[@leogallagher2736]

@@Studio22mix For sure, Baphometrix's clip to zero approach is definitely oriented towards producers who are mixing&mastering all within their DAW/in the box. I don't have experience with sending the mix out to analog gear at the end, but I would imagine you can still apply the same concepts there like you said 😃

[@Rhuggins]

Clipping only affects the peaks, it leaves the rest unaffected. I prefer to clip busses, really just the drum buss most of the time.

[@sysxtem]

🙄