Is it O.K. to Clip instead of Limit?

  • Thread starter Thread starter benage
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Sorry Glen, must have snuck my post in as you were writing yours, didn't mean to make you repeat answers.
 
benage said:
so I was initial trying to find out if either type of distotion was preferable and to be honest I never really got a straight answer
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Because it's a crooked question, benage :). There is no shortcut answer.

Which spice is better, salt or pepper? Which color, blue or red? Which microphone, SM57 or I5?

Even though in a poll most people would say they used salt, blue, the 57, and limiting more often than the others, "preference" is entirely based on the situation at hand. You don't add more salt if the dish is already too salty and you don't use a limiter if that "edge" you get with clipping distortion is what your mix is looking for.

EDIT: No problem, benage. It's just like my family table at Thanksgiving with everybody talking at once :D

G.
 
chamelious said:
I've noticed a lot of people seem to be hostile towards people trying to get maximum volume out of their mixes on this forum. Isn't that what proffesional recording/mastering studios will do on nearly all records released? If so, whats wrong with people persuing this? I totally understand the argument for the preservation of dynamics, but for a lot of musical styles this isn't so relevent, metal, pop, dance, some rock, etc.
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Man, don't listen to those other guys. Go on and limit the hell out of your music and clip it as much as you want. Make the music your bitch! Who the hell needs skills, lessons, or talent? To be good, all you need is a volume knob!!! Yeah, baby!!! :rolleyes:
 
benage said:
Wish we had thanksgiving, I like turkey.
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Gee, I'd have figured you guys would have a day of thanks for unloading those pesky, trouble making colonies on the Indians :D.

G.
 
I ran across this article while researching another topic and of course thought of this one. It summarizes much that has been said here, NINE YEARS AGO!

http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/taming_wild_mastering_levels/P0/

If this was a case of little Jimmy learning not to touch the the stove he would be burning his nubs by now.

There are also some other great articles there to check out.
 
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Oh yeah is it ok to clip instead of limit?

It might be ok to do both. Clipping (when done through a good converter and/or anti-alias filter) is akin to a brickwall limiter with 0 attack time and a release time equal to the sample rate. For VERY short transients this type of brickwall setting might be preferable. For anything greater than a few milliseconds definitely not cool (unless you think it's a cool effect), and why we generally stay clear of it. Many MEs distribute the workload of any process across several units because some units handle a given part of the process better. When doing some serious limiting it may be preferable to let clipping handle some of those short transients and let the limiter do the bulk of the work. I don't think that any ME would trade pure clipping over using a limiter though.

Even in this case it's as Glen said, do you want a little "pepper" and if so would it be black pepper or Red Hot Chili Pepper?
 
Thanks for your help guys, I have done some more A/B ing since I started this thread and I've decided to keep the limiter in. When I was switching the limiter on it was slightly smoothing the sound which initially I interpreted as muffling, thinking it was the start of pumping which was undesirable. But now I'm thinking without a limiter was harsh and the smoothing only sounded muffled by comparison.
 
...Never mind, benage beat me to the post :)

G.
 
benage said:
Thanks for your help guys, I have done some more A/B ing since I started this thread and I've decided to keep the limiter in. When I was switching the limiter on it was slightly smoothing the sound which initially I interpreted as muffling, thinking it was the start of pumping which was undesirable. But now I'm thinking without a limiter was harsh and the smoothing only sounded muffled by comparison.
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Benage, try clipping some occasional peaks before limiting while easing off on the limiter and let us know what you think. It may help to reduce some of the pumping on peaks (of course not without other artifacts).

Xenon is a very cool limiter which limits in two stages. One stage can be setup to emulate more of a clipping/brickwall function and then you can blend the two stages for the desired effect. It also has the ability to upsample while doing this to help with peak detection.
 
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masteringhouse said:
Benage, try clipping some occasional peaks before limiting while easing off on the limiter and let us know what you think. It may help to reduce some of the pumping on peaks (of course not without other artifacts).
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Thanks M.H. to be honest i'm not quite sure how to do this, i'm using logic 6, if I let the individual meters clip say 2db the master output just shows 2db in the red - all of which is caught by the limiter. maybe you meen set a longer attack time on the limiter which unfortunatly my limiter has no setting for just threshold, celing and release. It's ok though as I'm not really getting any pumping as I have the limiter set to 0ms release and not really pushing it that hard. The smoothing effect was very subtle and I prefer it to the harsher edge of clipping.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
As far as the label business goes, I suggest a "Free Volume Initiative" label that can inform the user that the volume has been optimized for the artistic content, and doesn't conform to anybody else's arbitrary standards for volume, either by being maximized for maximum loudness or by passing the bar of an arbitrary formula decided upon by a couple of engineers that cannot possibly be equally valid for all recordings.
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I need to get some of those labels for my next album. :D
 
benage said:
Thanks M.H. to be honest i'm not quite sure how to do this, i'm using logic 6, if I let the individual meters clip say 2db the master output just shows 2db in the red - all of which is caught by the limiter. maybe you meen set a longer attack time on the limiter which unfortunatly my limiter has no setting for just threshold, celing and release. It's ok though as I'm not really getting any pumping as I have the limiter set to 0ms release and not really pushing it that hard. The smoothing effect was very subtle and I prefer it to the harsher edge of clipping.
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Usually it's done by sending the audio through an external converter: D/A->analog chain->A/D (which clips slightly on the higher transients)

I would not recommend clipping the bus as you had mentioned above since there wouldn't be an anti-alias filter and you would potentially be adding harmonics that wouldn't be filtered out properly. These aliased frequencies would definitely cause the signal to become more harsh. There's a "correct way to clip" for this purpose even though that statement seems like an oxymoron. Again, this is not for everything. It's mostly used in cases where you (or the client) want to obtain a maximum level and where several techniques are used in combination. If you're getting the results that you want without this technique, don't use it.
 
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