Opinions; W1 Limiter and TLS Pocket Limiter

[Kingston]

clipping doesnt add punch! it takes it away like almost any transient reduction, but it will preserve it better than limiting. its simple to understand, consider on one limiter (say elephant) why fast limiting preserves punch better than slow limiting, it also has to introduce more distortion too.

hypothetically there is a point where a limiter becomes a clipper, limiting is simply a form of saturation.

what incredible ignorance of audio fundamentals in this thread and hair splitting, too.

OK,

psycho acoustics.

Doesn't matter if the distortion is added by analog or digital stage, ADDA, or saturated preamp or mix bus, or ass load of different types of limiting (or plugin saturators). In the right hands any of those can add *perceived* punch. Yeah, it looks flatter on the screen. DOH! but compare the original unclipped peaky sound with sound that is clipped *right*? Clipped sound will have plenty of more apparent punch. Doesn't always mean it's the good thing to do, but it just works many a time.

Again, highest importance in clipping at the right stage, and knowing when it's the right thing to do (and how).

Learning about "driving" any of the stages in processing that affect dynamics is a very fundamental skill in audio world. Similar to gain staging, clipping staging can do wonders and add *perceived* punch.

Granted, that kind of thing is quite overdone these days, but there are some examples where the overkill masters (K-6 !!) sound great and not fatiquing at all.

[martian]

yes i shoud have been clearer, i agree it does add perceived punch at a certain threshold, but i find the punch added is kinda fake, ie. its heard not felt.

[Kingston]

The fact that you say "fake" has to do with placebo. You know the waveform is flatter and "has less dynamics".

The fakeness comes from the mind of the listener. Someone else might think the nonclipped peaky stuff (or even limited) much more fake. I wouldn't want to argue with anyone on this.

But it could be generalised that certain types of "right" distortion is often perceived as loudness. Witness the fact that you have to crank up good full range studio monitors a lot more compared to average consumer system to accomplish the same perceived loudness or "punch". This, again, is a type of distortion that our ear perceives as loudness.

[martian]

The fact that you say "fake" has to do with placebo. You know the waveform is flatter and "has less dynamics".

The fakeness comes from the mind of the listener. Someone else might think the nonclipped peaky stuff (or even limited) much more fake. I wouldn't want to argue with anyone on this.

im not influenced by what i know/see anymore than anyone else who uses a blind system like ABX. i also know that my brain cant really tell the diffence between transients shorter than a certain size. i can clip transients and hear no difference, i can see 'dynamic' waveforms that have little punch and flat ones that have huge punch.

but id say its fake because i know how i want my music to sound. i get it how i want in the mix, then i have to raise the volume without loosing that. but of course my conditioning to the track will inevitabley bias my opinion of its dynamic perception, and like you say it will most likely be heard very differently by someone else. so with that in mind maybe you could give a track a listen for me, clipped and not?

[fabi]

wrapping is digital clipping. when a digital signal clips, it wraps and sounds harsh - unless you limit it or clip anything above max value, which is not the same letting it 'go above' and let it do its thing - digital 'oversaturation' as opposed to analog 'oversaturation'

or something like that. when talking about digital clipping, it has, in the discussions i have come across, always meant, the wrapping that occurs in digital by itself.

anything else would be the programmer's clipping, not the audio clipping/wrapping on its own terms...

[martian]

wrapping is digital clipping. when a digital signal clips, it wraps and sounds harsh - unless you limit it or clip anything above max value, which is not the same letting it 'go above' and let it do its thing - digital 'oversaturation' as opposed to analog 'oversaturation'

or something like that. when talking about digital clipping, it has, in the discussions i have come across, always meant, the wrapping that occurs in digital by itself.

anything else would be the programmer's clipping, not the audio clipping/wrapping on its own terms...

In digital signal processing, clipping occurs when the signal is restricted by the range of a chosen representation. For example in a system using 16-bit signed integers, 32767 is the largest positive value that can be represented, and if during processing the amplitude of the signal is doubled, sample values of 32000 should become 64000, but instead they are truncated to the maximum, 32767. Clipping is preferable to the alternative in digital systems — wrapping occurs if the digital hardware is allowed to "overflow", ignoring the most significant bits of the magnitude, and sometimes even the sign of the sample value, resulting in terrible distortion of the signal.

clip1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (klp)
v. clipped, clip·ping, clips
v. tr.
To cut, cut off, or cut out with or as if with shears: clip coupons; clipped three seconds off the record.
To make shorter by cutting; trim: clip a hedge.
To cut off the edge of: clip a coin.
To cut short; curtail.

i hope this is simply the source of confusion, but ive seen clipping as clipping and wrapping as wrapping.

[fabi]

wrapping is digital clipping. when a digital signal clips, it wraps and sounds harsh - unless you limit it or clip anything above max value, which is not the same letting it 'go above' and let it do its thing - digital 'oversaturation' as opposed to analog 'oversaturation'

or something like that. when talking about digital clipping, it has, in the discussions i have come across, always meant, the wrapping that occurs in digital by itself.

anything else would be the programmer's clipping, not the audio clipping/wrapping on its own terms...

In digital signal processing, clipping occurs when the signal is restricted by the range of a chosen representation. For example in a system using 16-bit signed integers, 32767 is the largest positive value that can be represented, and if during processing the amplitude of the signal is doubled, sample values of 32000 should become 64000, but instead they are truncated to the maximum, 32767. Clipping is preferable to the alternative in digital systems — wrapping occurs if the digital hardware is allowed to "overflow", ignoring the most significant bits of the magnitude, and sometimes even the sign of the sample value, resulting in terrible distortion of the signal.

clip1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (klp)
v. clipped, clip·ping, clips
v. tr.
To cut, cut off, or cut out with or as if with shears: clip coupons; clipped three seconds off the record.
To make shorter by cutting; trim: clip a hedge.
To cut off the edge of: clip a coin.
To cut short; curtail.

i hope this is simply the source of confusion, but ive seen clipping as clipping and wrapping as wrapping.

i know that this is what you mean, but it's the first time during my short years at kvr and em411 that i've come across this definition - in fact many vst manuals seem to refer to clipping when they are talking about wrapping.

[martian]

just for the record, i think me and greg have sorted our differences.

i accept my part equally in this 2-way street of misunderstanding one another.

easy,
will.

[Lunch Money]

Indeed! I was obviously wrong about a lot of my assumptions about Will or his information, which in some cases was merely miscommunication on one of our parts (often mine!) and not misinformation at all. As Will says, it's a 2-way thing, and I apologize for my side of it.

Cheers,
Greg

[diverdee]

martian & Lunch Money..... sitting in a tree......

Could this be the genesis of another KVR arke/chase style love story?

[Peter Martin]

2 thumbs down, sounds even worse than the L2. Fast digital limiters to me sound terrible.

Limiting has always made my recordings smaller, erases dynamics, and takes out all the heat n' spice.

The Sony inflator is the only way to go.

[defjamm]

i think it makes no sense to talk about limiters without mentioning the genre.

2 thumbs down, sounds even worse than the L2. Fast digital limiters to me sound terrible.

i love them, but only when they affect the snare and kick mainly. what kind of music are you doing? how hard are you driving them.

Limiting has always made my recordings smaller, erases dynamics, and takes out all the heat n' spice.

can't beat physics.

[kilroy]

Limiting has always made my recordings smaller, erases dynamics, and takes out all the heat n' spice.

The Sony inflator is the only way to go.

Actually Peter, I have heard some pretty spectacularily horrible Inflator...er...inflations, as well.

...same with Manley Vari-mu

...same with Weiss

...same with *insert name of favorite uber processor*



Engineers, musicians and various industry boffers create shite...not the tools. Funnily, an older engineer I was talking to recently acidly commented that returning to vinyl as a music listening medium would be be best move that could be made in the interests of returning to a hi-fidelity listening experience.

To tell the truth, it's not difficult to see his point.

[defjamm]

http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.p ... 358&page=2

this thread is about sterling, one of the most-important mastering houses worldwide. chris athens is an engineer there and participates in this thread, really interesting stuff. you can read directly from a mastering-pro how they do it.
at some point they have to get rid of the peaks of the snare and kick without losing the punch and he describes how.

Good, another mastering house that I can strike from the list... just like that guy who maintains that some HDs sound better than others and even bit-identical transfers can sound different... never ever would I trust guys like that with my music.

i would first try their service, if you tell them not to smash it they won't(i even think they would be happy about someone who actually doesn't want his music to be loud).
it depends on the musical genre and taste imho, i like what the guys at sterling do(on modern music).

but if you don't need high rms-levels for your work, there shouldn't be a reason to smash it.

[ermi]

Here's a mainstream rap song: http://users.volja.net/neres/02-juelz_s ... rumble.mp3.

What do you think they used to make it so loud?

I wouldn't want to do something like that, it's just curiousity. I think that it's definitely too loud.