Difference between a Soft Clipper and a Limiter?
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Mart[1001]
New member
Well I'm no expert in this field and I'm totally in the box, but my understanding is this:-
A normal limiter will square off the top peaks in the audio(hard limiting or brick wall) but a soft clip instead will gently 'round off' the tops using a soft distortion. So the clipping will be more transparent to the mix(less harsh).
With this in mind, you'd think that all limiting should include soft clip but as it doesn't, there must be a downside to soft clipping but I'm not sure what that is.
Mart.
A normal limiter will square off the top peaks in the audio(hard limiting or brick wall) but a soft clip instead will gently 'round off' the tops using a soft distortion. So the clipping will be more transparent to the mix(less harsh).
With this in mind, you'd think that all limiting should include soft clip but as it doesn't, there must be a downside to soft clipping but I'm not sure what that is.
Mart.
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Ironklad Audio
New member
the functional difference is that a limiter is essentially a compressor with an infinite compression ratio...that is, any peak above the threshold gets reduced to the level of threshold. with the clipper, the peaks get shaved off instead of being smashed flat.
Dags
New member
I think the difference is that the soft clip device 'rounds off' the edges of the waveform just below the threshold, so the resultant harmonic distortion isn't as harsh as that which occurs with your standard brick wall limiter that causes all signals above thresh to become square waves at the point of limiting.
Can a soft clipper therefore be thought of as a 'soft knee' limiter?
I'm in agreement with Mart - surely all limiters could benefit by having the abrupt 'edge' taken off the square wave at the point of limiting to reduce the harshness of the harmonic distortion.
Though wouldn't this non-linear transfer cause some distortion to occur below threshold?
Ok, enough taxing my brain for the moment. Back to my day job
Dags
Can a soft clipper therefore be thought of as a 'soft knee' limiter?
I'm in agreement with Mart - surely all limiters could benefit by having the abrupt 'edge' taken off the square wave at the point of limiting to reduce the harshness of the harmonic distortion.
Though wouldn't this non-linear transfer cause some distortion to occur below threshold?
Ok, enough taxing my brain for the moment. Back to my day job
Dags
dkelley
Active member
it's all heresy since a "limiter" is an all encomassing term for a compressor with a very high compression ratio.
how it does it's compression is a different topic, and the first term (soft clipper) is one example of how compression can be added, although it's not common in pro audio compressors.
for an example, there's a clipper type limiter circuit in my behringer mdx2200 composer pro. it's separate from the main compressor circuit (and of course there's one of each for each channel). the "limiter" has it's own knob. it sounds like ass. you can hear the distortion from the clipped waveform. if this was a soft clipper I guess it would be less obvious. if it IS a soft clipper then it's not very soft... either way it's junk.
fortunately the compression circuit itself actually is a far better limiter if you crank it's compression ratio and set it's other parameters as you would a true limiter. however the box isn't terribly well suited to limiting in general due to artifacts at that much compression (as is common with most inexpensive compressors).
so how the compressor does it is by lowering the level extremely when compression is set to limiting levels (20db or greater sort of as a guideline). the extra (crap) limiter does it by chopping off the top and bottom of the waveform above a certain level. nasty stuff. most true good quality audio limiters don't do it the way the berry's extra "limiter" does it, most just do it the way the berry's compressor does it which is far superior.
my best limiter is an 1176. it can do 1:20 compression with nearly instantaneous attack times. amazing stuff. and it doesn't sound like crap at that level. but it's a far more elaborate circuit than the vca compressor in the behringer (or most other compressors in general in fact). and the 1176 doesn't chop off the tops of waveforms when it's "limiting".
cheers,
Don
how it does it's compression is a different topic, and the first term (soft clipper) is one example of how compression can be added, although it's not common in pro audio compressors.
for an example, there's a clipper type limiter circuit in my behringer mdx2200 composer pro. it's separate from the main compressor circuit (and of course there's one of each for each channel). the "limiter" has it's own knob. it sounds like ass. you can hear the distortion from the clipped waveform. if this was a soft clipper I guess it would be less obvious. if it IS a soft clipper then it's not very soft... either way it's junk.
fortunately the compression circuit itself actually is a far better limiter if you crank it's compression ratio and set it's other parameters as you would a true limiter. however the box isn't terribly well suited to limiting in general due to artifacts at that much compression (as is common with most inexpensive compressors).
so how the compressor does it is by lowering the level extremely when compression is set to limiting levels (20db or greater sort of as a guideline). the extra (crap) limiter does it by chopping off the top and bottom of the waveform above a certain level. nasty stuff. most true good quality audio limiters don't do it the way the berry's extra "limiter" does it, most just do it the way the berry's compressor does it which is far superior.
my best limiter is an 1176. it can do 1:20 compression with nearly instantaneous attack times. amazing stuff. and it doesn't sound like crap at that level. but it's a far more elaborate circuit than the vca compressor in the behringer (or most other compressors in general in fact). and the 1176 doesn't chop off the tops of waveforms when it's "limiting".
cheers,
Don
