running NI Massive in the red?

[Almighty Alias]

I use Massive a lot; it's one of my main tools (I guess like many others). I've always made sure to keep the master volume down as to not red line it and run into clipping issues. A buddy of mine that makes & get's signed really good tunes gave me a few of his patches (mostly bass) to play with that came from one of his tunes.

The first thing I started noticing is that he's got the patches running into the red... like, a lot! All of the patches he made were like that (unless it was a pad or something), but they still sounded perfect. No bad clipping or anything. I've used other synth’s that start sounding like shit once they hit the red, clipping and other not good on the ear distortion sounds.

Does Massive have some internal limiter that's squashing the sound once you redline and max out the volume? Or is the master volume's "redline" reading just super touchy and shouldn’t be used as an accurate depiction of "too much" volume? Sorry if this is a stupid questions... I just found it kind of curious.

[OfficialDAPT]

I use Massive a lot; it's one of my main tools (I guess like many others). I've always made sure to keep the master volume down as to not red line it and run into clipping issues. A buddy of mine that makes & get's signed really good tunes gave me a few of his patches (mostly bass) to play with that came from one of his tunes.

The first thing I started noticing is that he's got the patches running into the red... like, a lot! All of the patches he made were like that (unless it was a pad or something), but they still sounded perfect. No bad clipping or anything. I've used other synth’s that start sounding like shit once they hit the red, clipping and other not good on the ear distortion sounds.

Does Massive have some internal limiter that's squashing the sound once you redline and max out the volume? Or is the master volume's "redline" reading just super touchy and shouldn’t be used as an accurate depiction of "too much" volume? Sorry if this is a stupid questions... I just found it kind of curious.

As far as I know, Massive doesn't have a limiter built in. Depending on how dirty/gritty the bass sound is, the clipping could be adding extra distortion and making it sound better.

[ehbes]

Did you think maybe he turned them down when mixing....

[Almighty Alias]

Did you think maybe he turned them down when mixing....

They sound just fine; if they sounded like shit I would have mos deff thought that. Actually, turning the master down makes them not sound as full.

also, what would be the point in having them turned way up if you just had to turn them down later when mixing? It's obviously there for effect, not volume level since you can just turn the volume up in the DAW.

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

do you can upload some of the presets i think i have to analyse them

[bassbum]

Sometimes I will make a patch and go into the red and when I turn it down its sounds a bit thin so I push it in the red more to see how it sounds.

If it sounds good do it.

[sunny_b_uk]

if it sounds good it sounds good. theres no rules. i sometimes let my snares clip in my DAW and bounce them back to audio.

[AxeD]

if it sounds good it sounds good. theres no rules. i sometimes let my snares clip in my DAW and bounce them back to audio.

Totally agree, although clipping in digital is bad 98% of the time

[Insahn]

Nothing wrong with clipping massive or any plug as long as the channel isn't clipping

[Sharmaji]

clipping is key to making things sound loud, from a drum sample onto a whole master. whether or not that loudness sounds good is always up for grabs, but it's def. part of the toolbox.

you can either turn down the channel or slap a limiter on it to control its actual output level.

my only concern is that everything else down the chain of that clipped element will be dealing with clipped audio; things can get fuzzy and ugly in a heartbeat when it comes to digital distortion. sometimes you'll want to leave it clean early on, and clip/distort later. YMMV...

[Artie_Fufkin]

Nothing wrong with clipping massive or any plug as long as the channel isn't clipping

Ya I think you can run any instrument or effect as hot as you want as long as it's not clipping at the very end. It would be your daw clipping the waveform, not Massive. Right?

[deadly_habit]

yea i clip things channel wise as long as the master isn't hot
massive though, clipping it just makes it sound even more digital to me so i avoid it

[VirtualMark]

An easy way to test would be to use an oscilloscope. You can drive it into the red and see if the waveform changes shape. I've seen a few patches that are in the red, i also wondered if its adding any distortion so i might check it out.

[nowaysj]

I swore I read something that Massive modeled some kind of nonlinear behavior on the master volume knob NI employee came on and told me otherwise

I just would not run massive into the red. I just wouldn't do it. I've never analyzed it, I don't think I've ever even really listened to it. Maybe I should have!

Sharma how are you clipping your signal?

[legend4ry]

Did you think maybe he turned them down when mixing....

You do know that internal clipping within a synth is completely different to channel clipping on your mixer, right?

If the synth is pushed to its limit in terms of DB, it'll add clipping characteristics of the audio engine built for the synth - these will be different from your DAWs mixer.
It 'can' sound good depending on the synth, how its modeled an if they've built it with clipping distortion in mind.

With massive, I am unsure if its 'part' of the synth (to have analogue modeled clipping for colourful distortion) but if it still sounds good it either has a very high digital clipping meter which is miles above what you can see visually and just sounds better because its louder or the clipping is actually a sound design element.

Turning the clipped signal down once its sent to a channel is exactly that.. Turning down a clipped signal - its still clipping internally but its been turned down in the overall mix.

[efence]

some times i like digi distortion on some gritty basses or a nasty lead. But i'll export solo thing bring in as audio tracks.

[Sharmaji]

Sharma how are you clipping your signal?

if i'm lazy, which is usually the case, logic's limiter does fine. when i'm bouncing stems, i'll clip drums, etc on the way back in-- maybe overdrive the preamp a bit, od the compressor a bit, and hit the input at like +2. works on sounds that need some oomph-- it can also really flatten an already lively sound.

[Artie_Fufkin]

I just tried this out. I had one oscillator set to a sine and set the intensity and amp up all the way, set the "bypass" slider up all the way, and turned the master up all the way in massive. Then I boosted it using the built in EQ. I got up to 19.395 dB and it only clipped at the very end of the signal path, the master channel. However, when I checked for distortion with Voxengo Spectrum Analyzer, there looked like some stuff from 2kHz and upwards at the -90dB level. Using multiple hi pass filters revealed that it was just really low level noise.

So you can have stuff going over 0 dB before the master without it clipping and I assume that you can have a soft synth push out signals over 0 dB without it distorting at that stage unless it's part of the synth. This is true for digital, right?


^^ Over on the ultimatemetal.com production section, it seems like using Gclip on snares is a popular method.

[AxeD]

An easy way to test would be to use an oscilloscope. You can drive it into the red and see if the waveform changes shape. I've seen a few patches that are in the red, i also wondered if its adding any distortion so i might check it out.

Shouldn't it change in every case? Assuming clipping=distorting / distorting adds harmonics, thus the waveform changes.

Not entirely sure though.

[VirtualMark]

I've just made a test patch - played a saw wave, unison to 20 and restart via gate so that all of the saws are in sync and add up. This creates a very loud saw wave which sends massive way into the red. I duplicated the channel, turned the mixer volume down on one and Massives master volume on the other, so the volume is equal on both. I put an oscilloscope on each and the waves are identical.

So the conclusion - running Massive into the red doesn't change the sound, at least internally in Massive. If anyone's hearing a difference then it must be their mixer or a vst in their fx chain that's causing it. I run in 32bit all the time so i don't get internal clipping on my daw.