clipping on purpose in mastering

[roostmusic]

I've been looking at professionally produced songs in sound forge and i see that most songs clip quite a bit while the song still remains clear with no distortion. The result is a louder song. How does one know how much it can clip? why cant i hear the clipping on these songs? Is it just a matter of normailizing 1db at a time until you can hear the clipping or distortion? What's the secret?
thanks for any insight.
regards, cory

 

[sonusman]

You are not seeing clipping in the normal sense. What you are usually seeing is the low end of the mix HEAVILY compressed.

It takes mixing the songs a specific way, and a great mastering compressor/limiter to do the same. With the right mix, I have been able to produce those kinds of results. With the wrong mix, you don't see the "clips" as much.

About all you are mixing is the leading edge of the kick drum and snare drums hits. If the transient isn't important to you, mix you song to have VERY strong kick and snare, the hit the limiter VERY hard at mastering. Your mix will look just like that, and if you did everything just right, you won't hear distortion.

Ed