The Dangers of Clipping

[Ermz]

Hey guys,

I was just invited down to one of Australia's best mastering studios. Once in, I was shown around by a very helpful operator, who decided to get me in for a coffee and a listening session. It was astounding to hear my work through one of the most neutral set-ups one could hope to have.

I have to tell you guys now... back off those Gclips and Timeworks Mastering Comps. Everything that you can't hear on pedestrian, mid-range monitors in pedestrian, semi-treated home studios, will come RIGHT OUT in a professional monitoring environment. I always thought my use of clipping to get transients through was relatively restrained. I was very wrong. Every bit of distortion you hear when you push too hard should be multiplied tenfold, and only then do you get an idea of what is actually going on.

For the sake of professional mixing in the next generation, I urge you all to back off your mastering chains and be more reserved (because some of the stuff I hear on here is pushed to the extreme). Don't do mastering at home! Get your clients to master their work professionally! It is such a shame to have a solid mix then ruin it all with rampant distortion.

I was quite surprised at how well my work held up in the environment, and the operator commented on the same... but it was essentially RUINED by the rampant clipping. Sure it was punchy and tight, but it was also goddamn harsh.

Putting on an album like Opeth's Damnation in that same environment just showed me the whole new world that professional mixing is. I mean, I thought I was getting there with my own material, but to hear the depth of an album like that in an uncoloured environment is just something else entirely.

So essentially what I'm saying is... the bar has been raised for me. I would very much recommend that you guys all raise your own bars, and be very vigilant and sparing when it comes to mastering your own work. It's better to be running a bit colder than the latest metal release, if it will save your work being butchered by distortion.


... /end rant. :Smokin:

 

[R-Stuur]

This very well could have just placed in that thread regarding the subject to reduce clutter.

I know what you mean though, but I'm not sure the general thought of 'hand it out to a professional' is any good. Professional only means people are crazy enough to pay you to do that shit, to me. Isnt 'if you wanna do it right- do it yourself- why we ALL started in the first place? You just gotta get ya mixing spot right (basstraps,optical monitor placement). Well, thats just my 2 cents..

 

[ghostofbridgeport]

i think Moonlapse and Steven Slate should debate

because slate stated in that thread "Getting your Loudness" that clipping can be a good thing if used sparingly

 

[Ermz]

It helps to read a bit more thoroughly before replying. I never claimed that clipping shouldn't be used at all.

The aim of this is to share my experience with the other people here who are still sort of discovering clipping as a useful technique in mastering. It can be a great thing, but needs to be used in a very reserved manner lest the entire mix be riddled with distortion (which I commonly hear on here).

It even came out on my own mixes, which I thought had a fairly sparing use of clipping... I was wrong, and quite glad to be shown it.

 

[poidaobi]

It helps to read a bit more thoroughly before replying.

For the newbs out here what exactly does clipping achieve? I'd assume it doesnt mean making your mix clip over 0db but something similar?

 

[whitedamp]

Which brings another question. Is it that important to make your music sounds awesome on absolutely hi quality systems? I mean, most people will probably hear your tunes on an iPod with headphones, on the pc or in a car. Maybe this is a loss that you can just accept, like 16 bits/44.1Khz versus 24 bits/96Khz.

 

[Ermz]

I think it's any engineers job to make their work sound as good as possible on as wide a range of systems as possible. Saying 'I'm mixing this for myspace and iPods, so who cares' is a huge cop out, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's that sort of lack of professionalism which will impact future recordings in a negative way, rather than a positive one.

@poidaobi: Clipping is basically just squaring off your waveforms at 0dB (or whatever your ceiling is set to). Square waves don't really exist in the analogue domain, so what doing this on quick drum transients tends to be is force the output DAC to recreate that missing peak information. This way you can get transients through, theoretically 'above' 0dBFS. You have to be extremely careful when using it however as it can cause very audible distortion if the program material peaks in certain points.

 

[poidaobi]

Always helpful. Cheers.

 

[brandy]

Bravo, Moonlapse!!

Thanks for posting this, it is a 100% professional and wise statement you made. You're so right.


Please let me add a few things.

Which brings another question. Is it that important to make your music sounds awesome on absolutely hi quality systems? I mean, most people will probably hear your tunes on an iPod with headphones, on the pc or in a car.

Yea - that is indeed a fact (a very sad fact, btw) - no one will listen to that superduper recording on a 50.000 bucks hifi-system. Instead of that 90% of the time that music will be auditioned via myspace and stuff.

But: The more processing we apply to a signal (esp processing like clipping) - the bader it WILL sound when it is compressed to a shitty mp3.

Check it out:

Create 128kbit mp3s out of a mh... very unprocessed, "unhot" 80ies recording (maybe a ACDC track) and then out of a slammed to death -7db rms ultra-hyped track. Made in a home studio...

You will hear the artefacts VERY audible on the hot track, the dynamic/unhyped track will sound allmost identical (*cough-cough*) to the wave.

i think Moonlapse and Steven Slate should debate

because slate stated in that thread "Getting your Loudness" that clipping can be a good thing if used sparingly

well - it is a differece if you just clip ONE FUCKIN TIME in the end... dealing with a decent mix - recorded through decent converters, mixed by a talented mixing engineer... You will be surprised how much processing/clipping a clean and well produced tone can take...

But it sums up (look that mp3 statement above). If you allready start with clipping the preamps/converters while recording, then process the shit out of the stuff in the mix, clipping the transiens all over and stuff...

THEN you might have big problems to get a HOT master wich still sounds clean and punchy.


my 2cents,
brandy

 

[Keessi]

very fucking true!

I've been observing Mika Jussila (finnvox studios in finland) mastering all sorts of music during the past 2 weeks including the 5.1 mix of the new nightwish album(HUGE sound!!) and damn I've learned a lot already. He uses 0 plug-ins for once. All hardware! He also told me that he'd like to get rid off compression in mastering. "well this would sound better 4 db's lower but they'll complain it's not as loud as the new in flames or something"

go figure when a mastering engineer(done about 3600 albums) says something like that....

 

[kaomao]

As stated above, people are listening with cheap hifi's so I won't waste my money on a very good mastering studio to get my shit masterd, unless it's a real record not a demo like mine.
People are starting to not buy cd's, the new market seems itunes (so basically mp3's and other compressed formats).
Bah it's really sad I know, buy if you think the final user we'll listen on laptop speakers/cheap hifi this really makes you think your work most of the times is wasted.
Another good thing is people should turn that goddamn volume knob louder, so we can master our works a little bit softer and more dynamic.

 

[Torniojaws]

Another good thing is people should turn that goddamn volume knob louder, so we can master our works a little bit softer and more dynamic.

That's one of the bad things about mp3s/other compressed formats. People have thousands of different songs often on random. It's pretty annoying when you have to adjust the volume everytime the song changes, because songs are being mastered to different RMS.

If there was a worldwide standard RMS, it would make things a lot easier.

 

[Downtime]

Another good thing is people should turn that goddamn volume knob louder, so we can master our works a little bit softer and more dynamic.

I hate this loudness-war as well. If my sound is clear, transparent and punchy, but not "as loud as the new In Flames..." simply turn this one a bit louder (and if it´s to 11 ) and it rocks. At least I prefer this instead of making it sound all loud and hard but lacking dynamics our transparency.

But on the other side: Yes, there´s more mp3s, there´s more myspace and so on. And it will be even more and more in the future. But it´s our goddamn job to make stuff sound great, not to make stuff "sound great on f****** myspace". Even if someone could tell me: "Hey, no one listened to your job of 2001 on a good environment in the last six years" I would prefer to think "But if they will, it will burn their chairs" instead of "And I hope they won´t ever do it at all"...

Seb

 

[Slate]

I use clipping only in the mastering stage. I don't use any limiting, or if I do its quite rare.

But clipping only works when the mix is balanced both dynamically and frequency wise. These two mixes go to RMS -9.1 at their peaks and were a sinch to master because I mixed them with a lot of control.. both of these were mastered with no limiting, all A/D pushing:

www.stevenslatedrums.com/demo/lcslutz.mp3

www.stevenslatedrums.com/demo/asslutz.mp3

In cases where I have to master a mix that is all over the place, its way harder to push the A/D without distortion. So i have to patch it with dynamics eq to get it to where I can just "louden" it with the A/D push.

So the real key is, have a great monitoring system (if you can't hear 40Hz on your system I wouldn't recommend mixing or mastering on it) and balance your mix so that is punchy yet not overly dynamic so that its all over the place.

 

[jesterroot4]

wahhh i love the sound on that second track.. and think its well good how you got it that big and clear without limiting etc..

i do find this loudness war thing very anoying, although i know myself i doo get carried away some times.

and as someone mentioned earlier about wanting to take compression out of the master chain.. i totaly agree!!! i hate it! especialy wen trying to master extremely dynamic music.!

this is track i recorded for my more grooving/mellow rock band...
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/29452_nottodaymaster2.mp3

lol i think the site i loaded it up onto makes it louder and more harsh.. lol coz its not even this loud on windows media player full blast lol

oh well umm... i compressed it abit.. but do you think it links ok into the verse section without the compression being to noticable?

( i happend not to record the vox, and they were mixed already before they got to me. so it was hard tryin to make them abit more husky lol)

 

[ApolloSpeed]

i use Timeworks comp and try to shoot for -12 rms.....works well for me, loud enough and not too much distortion!

 

[nwright]

Man, I would love to sit in on something like that.

I feel like I've learned a lot in a little time (just a bit over a year since my first project)...

I've tried the clipping thing and I think it works for some things, but for some reason, it never sat well with me to do a whole lot with it. I've only used GClip, though. But I've only lowered it by maybe 2%, so I don't even clip anything, except maybe snare hits. My fear was I would be creating something that would be heard on other systems that maybe I don't hear on mine...Sounds like it would very well be the case if I clipped any more.

Seems like I've become known in our scene as a "mastering guy" more so than anything. It scares the crap out of me to think what the real pros would say about my masters. I don't have any hardware, so it's all done through plugs. I'd be drooling to see a setup of a pro mastering suite.

 

[JBroll]

I feel like spending time analyzing it made me learn a lot more about how it works and fits. I had a pretty good idea but cranking the 'crackly' areas, overclipping to the point of a new distortion stage, limiting until there was so much pumping it was a rhythmic device of its own... I really got a grip on where all of that fits in and how to cut back on it more effectively. It was nice, at first, having the audio equivalent of crack at my disposal with all of these goofy things here and there, but it wound up being much more like a seasoning that needed to be used sparingly at best (that's probably saying something, coming from someone who grew up in Texas and who drinks his coffee black with cayenne pepper) as I spent more time with it.

Clipping can bring out some great things, but it takes filtering afterwards - the 'cranked tube clean' sound is really just mild clipping with a lot of high end thrown out, and it doesn't sound distorted so much as punchy and rich. It can range to a pretty high level of saturation with enough filtering. Plenty of guys in jazz and fusion get overdrive sounds with a lot of compression and clipping but also with a lot of clipping, but you don't hear buzz - you hear notes. If you just play a guitar clipper or a distortion pedal straight into a PA, of course it'll sound like shit - and so will a clipper that hasn't been tamed properly - but there are ways to fix that.

Jeff

 

[blackbird]

Thanks for the great post Moonlapse!!!
The big problem with the clipping and GCLIP are the lows / the low notes of some guitars and the toms/ I have found that everything is frequency connected . The spectral balance of the song gives you the punch and that loudness feeling. Some of my tracks just sounds open and loud with -16 -15 RMS. But most of the time something eats the clearness /the midds and the lows /. I think better mixing skills will give us much better and easy way to master material...

 

[Morgan C]

Just out of interest Moonlapse, how many dBs of GClip are you talking when you say 'sparingly'? 1, 2, 4?
I think I probably use a bit much, especially since I'm using samples and the clipping affects almost every hits, but on my terrible system I can't hear it.