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just wondering what peoples take are when their daw meter hits the red and digitally clips
if the freq analyzer shows a major spike i try to smooth it out generally, but if not audible clipping in the mix i gen leave it rather then spend a bunch of time trying to fix and let a limiter treat it if it's a digital file i just use to spin
anyone else?
(yeah i know it's a bad mixdown practice in general, but spending too much time being anal on one thing can kill writing vibe)

avoid it like the plague,

i know if its clipping and it doesn't sound loud enough theres something wrong with my mix, no point in clipping it to make it louder rather just fix the problem in the first place.

clipping might not be audiable to you but if it ever gets onto vinyl most probably will be.

used to be different when reason used to clip at -3db i used to leave it but nowadays no.

Truncated wrote:avoid it like the plague,

i know if its clipping and it doesn't sound loud enough theres something wrong with my mix, no point in clipping it to make it louder rather just fix the problem in the first place.

clipping might not be audiable to you but if it ever gets onto vinyl most probably will be.

used to be different when reason used to clip at -3db i used to leave it but nowadays no.

yea theres times i have the meter in cubase hitting the red with a minor conflict with sub bass and say a kick drum that is already eq'd etc but only a slight bit db wise that despite tweeking i can't get rid of that i tend to ignore
hell used to have 320s of dnb dubs sent to me that had digital clipping under shit like span, but sounded fine

I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix. I hate it when I see people mixing their track with the master channel constantly at +6Db in the red. The first thing I do with my mixes is slap a Adaptive Limiter on the master, then adjust all my elements individually so they are not getting over compressed.

The only time I use digital clipping is for making a bad ass mother fucking scream. Logics A-Verb set to Pixi Resonator and two of Logics gain units set to +24 Db, then an adaptive limiter on that. Makes the scream you hear on Aphex Twins, Come to Daddy (live version with 1 minute scream)

Rendr wrote:I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix. I hate it when I see people mixing their track with the master channel constantly at +6Db in the red. The first thing I do with my mixes is slap a Adaptive Limiter on the master, then adjust all my elements individually so they are not getting over compressed.

The only time I use digital clipping is for making a bad ass mother fucking scream. Logics A-Verb set to Pixi Resonator and two of Logics gain units set to +24 Db, then an adaptive limiter on that. Makes the scream you hear on Aphex Twins, Come to Daddy (live version with 1 minute scream)

yea i mean you can use digital clipping as a distortion fx as well (hell digitally clip a 909 or 808 kick +20 dbs and instant gabber kick)
just wondering how anal people are about it when tune writing stage

Deadly Habit wrote:

Rendr wrote:I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix. I hate it when I see people mixing their track with the master channel constantly at +6Db in the red. The first thing I do with my mixes is slap a Adaptive Limiter on the master, then adjust all my elements individually so they are not getting over compressed.

The only time I use digital clipping is for making a bad ass mother fucking scream. Logics A-Verb set to Pixi Resonator and two of Logics gain units set to +24 Db, then an adaptive limiter on that. Makes the scream you hear on Aphex Twins, Come to Daddy (live version with 1 minute scream)

yea i mean you can use digital clipping as a distortion fx as well (hell digitally clip a 909 or 808 kick +20 dbs and instant gabber kick)
just wondering how anal people are about it when tune writing stage

Well, I wouldn't describe myself as an anal person. But like Truncated said, I tend to avoid it like the plague in a mix. Although that mostly comes down to the fact that one of the first thing I learned about production, before EQ, filtering, compression etc. Was that digital clipping is a no no. So it's kind of drilled into me that it's the devil himself.

Rendr wrote:I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix.

AIDS vs Digital Clipping in the mix.


Would take that over AIDS anyday.


That's just me.



Oh yeah, I try to watch out for clipping also.

Rendr wrote:

Deadly Habit wrote:

Rendr wrote:I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix. I hate it when I see people mixing their track with the master channel constantly at +6Db in the red. The first thing I do with my mixes is slap a Adaptive Limiter on the master, then adjust all my elements individually so they are not getting over compressed.

The only time I use digital clipping is for making a bad ass mother fucking scream. Logics A-Verb set to Pixi Resonator and two of Logics gain units set to +24 Db, then an adaptive limiter on that. Makes the scream you hear on Aphex Twins, Come to Daddy (live version with 1 minute scream)

yea i mean you can use digital clipping as a distortion fx as well (hell digitally clip a 909 or 808 kick +20 dbs and instant gabber kick)
just wondering how anal people are about it when tune writing stage

Well, I wouldn't describe myself as an anal person. But like Truncated said, I tend to avoid it like the plague in a mix. Although that mostly comes down to the fact that one of the first thing I learned about production, before EQ, filtering, compression etc. Was that digital clipping is a no no. So it's kind of drilled into me that it's the devil himself.

i mean same, but sometimes when working on tune prolly like me you can over low/hi cut something to avoid the red and just doesn't sound right despite layering and pre compression etc in mixdown phase how anal do you get?

In the writing stage is when I'd rather take care of it if I can, because I'm not the best at mixing down as it is, and I don't want to be in love with a sound that I just can't leave in the mix for some audible reason. Just because I can't hear the difference doesn't mean the guy at the plant isn't going to charge me more for having to do my job for me, ya know

But yea, if it's not audible on a system and it's not BLATANT, I'm good on it. I don't release any tunes anyway haha. I won't tax a final mixdown for our label that is clipping though.

Deadly Habit wrote:just wondering how anal people are about it when tune writing stage

I'm not particularly anal about it, I just don't do it.

Avoiding digital clipping on your master bus doesn't take hours of tweaking EQs and limiters and stuff, it just takes knowing which bits of your track are the loudest and starting out with them quiet enough that the whole thing doesn't clip.

If u digitally clip inside your audio program, your bounces will most definatly sound like crap. Most audio programs have extra headroom to play with - but when bounced - those extreme peaks will just get chopped off and clip/distort in your mixdown - even tho your audio program shows no clipping. I bounce a few test runs to see if anything is majorly clipping and go back and adjust levels.

I try to use as much headroom as possible - obviously - because i like big dynamic range. I hate compression - it destroys the dynamic range but keeps the peaks below clip and troughs louder. Depending on the sound u want...


twitch

Deadly Habit wrote:

Rendr wrote:

Deadly Habit wrote:

Rendr wrote:I'd rather eat an AID's sandwich than have digital clipping n my mix. I hate it when I see people mixing their track with the master channel constantly at +6Db in the red. The first thing I do with my mixes is slap a Adaptive Limiter on the master, then adjust all my elements individually so they are not getting over compressed.

The only time I use digital clipping is for making a bad ass mother fucking scream. Logics A-Verb set to Pixi Resonator and two of Logics gain units set to +24 Db, then an adaptive limiter on that. Makes the scream you hear on Aphex Twins, Come to Daddy (live version with 1 minute scream)

yea i mean you can use digital clipping as a distortion fx as well (hell digitally clip a 909 or 808 kick +20 dbs and instant gabber kick)
just wondering how anal people are about it when tune writing stage

Well, I wouldn't describe myself as an anal person. But like Truncated said, I tend to avoid it like the plague in a mix. Although that mostly comes down to the fact that one of the first thing I learned about production, before EQ, filtering, compression etc. Was that digital clipping is a no no. So it's kind of drilled into me that it's the devil himself.

i mean same, but sometimes when working on tune prolly like me you can over low/hi cut something to avoid the red and just doesn't sound right despite layering and pre compression etc in mixdown phase how anal do you get?

Well, when a layer keeps on going in the red, even after it's been hi/low cut etc usually I just take the volume down until it's not in the red anymore by a good 2-3 Db, then use a compressor & limiter to bring up volume.

However if the damage had already been down and this is mixed down track were talking about, I wouldn't think of playing it to anybody, and would pray to god that I had a copy of the original project. And I would be very pissed off if I didn't have a hard copy.

If someone offered you a brickwall limiter with zero attack time, no release artefacts, capable of retaining apparent transients without obvious squishing (up to a point of course) and harmonic distortion only during the active cycles, you'd probably take it.

Digital clipping (especially oversampled) can be useful, and used judiciously/correctly I'd take it over a limiter every time. Most people would, if you played them level matched files.

Naturally, it depends on what's happening, spectral content, how much it is being pushed etc...

But unless you're using it specifically for loudness, there's NO reason to be anywhere near 0dB in your mix. And don't submit a clipped mix for mastering, it makes people (like me) rather angry Especially vinyl.

goes without saying. rendering a track that goes into the red at any point is just lazy and ignorant. red bad bad bad bad

BTW I waffled about this on DOA too, well, not clipping exactly, but the question of headroom in a digital system...

If you're really bored you can find it here;

http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.ph ... did=604197

everything i make is digitally clipped to fuck

but its all done purposefully of course

Macc wrote:If someone offered you a brickwall limiter with zero attack time, no release artefacts, capable of retaining apparent transients without obvious squishing (up to a point of course) and harmonic distortion only during the active cycles, you'd probably take it.

Digital clipping (especially oversampled) can be useful, and used judiciously/correctly I'd take it over a limiter every time. Most people would, if you played them level matched files.

i was always surprised how clear/transparent Cooledit was for this. You could just rag something up to +3 when normalizing it with really very little audible damage done. one of the things i miss about moving to a Mac!

Never. I don't let anything clip and bring it down to sit nicely in the mix.

i don't really like the sound of it, so i don't do it.

I was always told clipping is bad? So I don't do it...