guitars clipping on master when fading out

[dcb]

i nowadays mix into my mastering chain and i get competitive levels easily.
the problem with clipping/limiting on my master is that for example

>> i have no audible clipping when the while band plays. GOOD !

>>but when there is only guitars (in a break) oder when the guitar rings out,
somehow gclip AND ozone both make the clipping audible, very nasty sounding... BAD !

so how do you guys manage this stuff ?

i mean we hear clipping guitars on almost all modern releases... and probably 99 % of the people will think its some sort of fx on guitars... but i dont like that..

p.s. : i started automating guitars down (because the mastering chain is pulling the guitars up..) im basically fighting against the mastering chain ;-)
but its not 100 % possible without lowering the volume of the guitars too much...

 

[Morgan C]

Yeah you hear thus all over commercial mixes (chimaira's Resurrection is particularly bad).. I've had this problem too. No real solution other than automation I think :/ otherwise it wouldn't be on so many pro mixes.

 

[dcb]

thats why i love the new deftones... their single seems soo quiet against somany modern metal records. still deftones make my head bang.
all the other bands make my ears bleed...

 

[MetalSound]

instead of automating guitar levels you could also automate your mastering plugins.
if all is clipping too much you may also have uneven levels in your mixing stage. try turning down the guitars or taking out some low end/high end.
too much upper mids can easily cause clipping, too.

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

don't use clipping on the 2bus, it sounds balls.

 

[Emdprodukt]

don't use clipping on the 2bus, it sounds balls.

I heard a lot of great mixes with a clipper on the 2bus. What's wrong about that technique?

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

I don't particularly like it, it produces the effect stated by the OP and generally puts a little layer of distortion over everything, it sounds much nicer to me to clip the drums and then limit the master.

 

[Emdprodukt]

I clip my kick, snare and toms so I don't have to use the clipper too much on the 2bus. Always sounded better to me than limiting. What limiter do you use?

 

[Melodeath]

Hmm, I've never had this issue. But I use limiting/Elephant, not clipping

 

[dcb]

instead of automating guitar levels you could also automate your mastering plugins.
if all is clipping too much you may also have uneven levels in your mixing stage. try turning down the guitars or taking out some low end/high end.
too much upper mids can easily cause clipping, too.

nahhh, thats my problem. everythign is peerfecct ;-) !
except for the guitars starting to clip when they ring out.....

i will try automating the levels going into the mastering chain, see if that helps.

i know slate automates his toms (eq highpass) to prevent them from clipping the master bus...

and yeah, we hear that on almost every modern release thats loud as fuck...
so it seems im not the only one who has that problem , hehe.

any more ideas how to fight this ??

 

[AerialThesis]

if something is clipping why don't you just bring the volume down a bit?

 

[Uladyne]

Can you Automate the bypass on Ozone? Turn that fucker off on the guitar sections. Or if that makes weird artifacts such as cymbal decay suddenly dropping in volume at said passages, try this:

Create an "Ozone" bus, with all your mastering FX, and send it to your master bus. Remove all the mastering effects from your mastering bus, besides maybe a limiter set to 0 to keep the master from clipping. Seperate the "guitar only" sections from the rest of the guitar tracks, sending them straight to the master bus. Everything else will go to the "Ozone" bus with the mastering effects.

Essentially all your "guitar only" sections will bypass the mastering effects.

In theory. Not really sure how well it would work. Just thought of it as I read your post. I guess the challenge woul be getting the guitars to not sound like they're dropping in volume too much if you don't desire such an effect.

EDIT: Or instead of reassigning all your sends I guess you could just keep all your effects on the master bus and send that to your new bus to meet up with your "guitar-only" bus, and send that bus to your soundcard outs. Less routing adjustments. Should have thought of that while I was typing the original post but I'm kind of a 'tard.

 

[AudioPhile777]

This is why you don't use a clipper on the master... whats wrong with compression and limiting?

 

[dcb]

EDIT: Or instead of reassigning all your sends I guess you could just keep all your effects on the master bus and send that to your new bus to meet up with your "guitar-only" bus, and send that bus to your soundcard outs. Less routing adjustments. Should have thought of that while I was typing the original post but I'm kind of a 'tard.

actually thats a really cool idea.

maybe i should only clip drs, bass and vox as a group and eq.
guitars go to a different out and meet the rest on my mb.
hope i dont loose the "glue". kinda like how my mix sounds now....

thanks guys for thinking with me ! ;-)