The Science of Clipping - The ULTIMATE Tool for Loudness + Punch

Some people have been asking about Standard Clip here, because they're not able to reproduce the same overshoots I observed in my session. So I captured a screenshot of the session, Standard Clip settings, and meters for you below. Also, Nicholas Di Lorenzo from @panorama_mastering just published a good video that shows how the overshoots happen in Standard Clip and why they happen on some material but not other material. You can watch that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGiLAhHPHV0. First of all, I'm clipping very gently here. A couple dB on super short audio events. Mainly just the snare. I'm not pushing the clipper hard at all. Check this out: capture.dropbox.com/UY8A1izXIQNtEJFU You're most likely not seeing the overshoots because Standard Clip has 2 clipping stages. The first is oversampled, and the second is a 0X non-oversampled hard ceiling (called "Ceiling" in the plugin). If you leave the Ceiling engaged, then the second clipping stage hides the overshoots from you by applying more clipping. If you disengage the Ceiling parameter, you see the true peak level overshoots both in sample peak and true peak (true peak overshoots being higher). The same is true for K-Clip and most other clippers with oversampling. They usually have a second 0X OS ceiling. And in fact, you see the exact same thing in iZotope RX Audio Editor. When you use the Resampling process to downsample anything, you'll see the parameter "Post Limiter" engaged by default. They need a post-downsampling limiter to catch these overshoots. This is because the Fourier transform process with the sinc function related to the lowpass filter used in anti-aliasing will cause higher and higher overshoots the more Fourier partial harmonics are used. The more oversampling used (and the more extreme the downsampling) the higher the overshoots will be. Some people have commented that they're not seeing overshoots using Standard Clip with the ceiling off, so we're investigating this further. It could have to do with the material being run through the clipper and the project sample rate. I'll post more info here as I learn more.

Holy crap, I saw someone mention the name "vespers" and had not idea that you were the guy from 10 years ago. Here you are making hits and I'm still in my bedroom haha

I am in awe when I watch someone of your professionalism teach about such advanced topics. Thank you for this.

Keep in mind that the artifacts added by aliasing are explicitly non-harmonic. They're harmonics that would have been created but bounced off the Nyquist frequency and therefore render improperly. You're right that for gritty DnB track, aliasing is probably pretty much negligible. But that won't always be the case depending on how much clipping you're doing and what genre you're working with.

Man this was probably the most helpful video I watched on clippers. Even doing it on a dnb song! You are a legend. Hope you’ll have some more dnb examples in your videos. Subscribed!

Love how you break down complicated subjects and make them easy to understand, with practical advice!

I remember Baphometrix saying something about not turning on oversampling in his Clip To Zero Strategy series of videos - while extremely comprehensive, I got a little lost in the series, this video has cleared things up for me so thank you (easier when it’s d’n’b too!)

Priceless info as always ! Thanks a lot.

absolut gold

Very informative. Thanks much.

This is RIGHT up my alley. Videos like this are exactly the reason I am subscribed. Its hard to find content on Youtube that delve into slightly more advanced topics, without having to pander to the newbie that jsut downloaded their DAW a week ago. Keep it comin!!

Great video, thank you for the R&D

You blew my mind with ozone back in the day. Awesome to see you still killing it.

Great explanation thank you

Great video. Thanks

Great video!

Great video - did not know about this

This was a super cool Video as always. I think oversampling can be genuinely useful, especially when it comes to more aggressive clipping but in this case it makes absolute sense to leave it off. Thanks for the Input!

Had to subscribe, this is gold

watched your video on how to master loud but retain clarity recently and it instantly fixed my problems until now id always struggle (I've been producing lightly as a hobby for over 2 years now) to hit a good loudness without ruining it, but now i know exactly what was my issue this channel is great