Understand clipping with Standardclip and Eventide's Saturate

[OUNULK]

Hello,

I've been trying to understand how to take advantage of clipping to get rid of some sharp transients and I have been playing with these two plugins.

Something very basic that is confusing me is the following:
I have an incoming signal that peaks at around -9.1db which is being fed to these plugins. I'm using hard clipping on both plugins. In Eventide's Saturate I'm driving by 6db and set a ceiling of -6db, with auto gain set at the output. The resulting signal has its transients clearly reduced in a desirable way. However, when using StandardClip with Clip set to -6db and Ceiling set to 6db, nothing is happening. I guess this makes sense since the incoming signal only peaks at -9.1db.
So what is Eventide's Saturdate doing? Is it first normaling the incoming signal or something? What am I missing here? How do I correctly compare these plug-ins with my -9.1db setup?

[roman.i]

According to your explanation you're doing exactly the opposite in StandardClip.

[Etienne1973]

Assuming you do the same with both plugins. Drive 6dB and ceiling -6dB. I read you have auto gain (compensation?) activated in Eventide's Saturate. Also in StandardClip?

[OUNULK]

Assuming you do the same with both plugins. Drive 6dB and ceiling -6dB. I read you have auto gain (compensation?) activated in Eventide's Saturate. Also in StandardClip?

StandardClip doesn't have autogain as far as I can tell. Or it does it by default.

[Etienne1973]

You sure drive 6dB and set ceiling -6dB in StandardClip? You wrote the opposite. Just as typo, right?

[OUNULK]

Here's how my settings look:

clip.png

[MattLeschuck]

Use the output stage / right side of standard clip as your makeup gain and clip past zero (over 0db in the digital realm) indicator. You need to use the input stage to set your actual clipping amount.

In your case if your input peak is -6.64 (in your photo) and say you want to clip 2db off the transients, set the clip fader in the input section to -8.64 (2db below -6.64). Then you can use the output gain fader to increase the volume by 2db to gain match and get the same peak, but higher RMS / LUFS level.

[audiotools]

Hi Ounulk, if you set the clip fader to -6 dB in StandardCLIP, then by default it will clip exactly at -6 dB, so if your signal has -9 dB, nothing will be shaved off. You have to set the fader to at least -9 dB for it to clip. With pure hard clipping, auto-gain makes no sense, since the perceived volume remains the same, when you only shaping of the transients (With soft-clipping this is another story).

BTW: I looks like the "ceiling" causes some confusion. When downsampling to the original sample-rate it can happen that the signal jumps back over the clip boundary, because this is the only correct aliasing free signal. If absolutely no samples above a certain limit should be allowed, the ceiling fader is meant for that. This is mostly important in the master channel, in most cases you can simply leave it off (Ceiling is basically hard clipping without oversampling).

Use the output stage / right side of standard clip as your makeup gain and clip past zero (over 0db in the digital realm) indicator. You need to use the input stage to set your actual clipping amount.

Sure you can do that, but it's much easier to turn down the clip control. (Which internally does exactly the same thing if you turn the input fader up and the output fader down).

[MattLeschuck]

Hi Ounulk, if you set the clip fader to -6 dB in StandardCLIP, then by default it will clip exactly at -6 dB, so if your signal has -9 dB, nothing will be shaved off. You have to set the fader to at least -9 dB for it to clip. With pure hard clipping, auto-gain makes no sense, since the perceived volume remains the same, when you only shaping of the transients (With soft-clipping this is another story).

BTW: I looks like the "ceiling" causes some confusion. When downsampling to the original sample-rate it can happen that the signal jumps back over the clip boundary, because this is the only correct aliasing free signal. If absolutely no samples above a certain limit should be allowed, the ceiling fader is meant for that. This is mostly important in the master channel, in most cases you can simply leave it off (Ceiling is basically hard clipping without oversampling).

Use the output stage / right side of standard clip as your makeup gain and clip past zero (over 0db in the digital realm) indicator. You need to use the input stage to set your actual clipping amount.

Sure you can do that, but it's much easier to turn down the clip control. (Which internally does exactly the same thing if you turn the input fader up and the output fader down).

Audiotools, thanks for the clarification with everything.

[OUNULK]

Hi Ounulk, if you set the clip fader to -6 dB in StandardCLIP, then by default it will clip exactly at -6 dB, so if your signal has -9 dB, nothing will be shaved off. You have to set the fader to at least -9 dB for it to clip. With pure hard clipping, auto-gain makes no sense, since the perceived volume remains the same, when you only shaping of the transients (With soft-clipping this is another story).

BTW: I looks like the "ceiling" causes some confusion. When downsampling to the original sample-rate it can happen that the signal jumps back over the clip boundary, because this is the only correct aliasing free signal. If absolutely no samples above a certain limit should be allowed, the ceiling fader is meant for that. This is mostly important in the master channel, in most cases you can simply leave it off (Ceiling is basically hard clipping without oversampling).

Use the output stage / right side of standard clip as your makeup gain and clip past zero (over 0db in the digital realm) indicator. You need to use the input stage to set your actual clipping amount.

Sure you can do that, but it's much easier to turn down the clip control. (Which internally does exactly the same thing if you turn the input fader up and the output fader down).

Thanks. I think this makes sense to me, at least the part about setting the clip db to be exactly where you want the signal to be clipped!
I'm still a little confused about when to use the ceiling, even with your explanation:

If absolutely no samples above a certain limit should be allowed, the ceiling fader is meant for that. This is mostly important in the master channel, in most cases you can simply leave it off (Ceiling is basically hard clipping without oversampling).

A few questions about this:

1. Why is allowing some samples to pass the clip level warranted in some settings but not others? Is this a mastering vs. sound design dichotomy?
2. Is there a "downside" to setting the ceiling level?
3. Is there a way to automatically set the ceiling level to be the same as the clip level? (Why would one set it otherwise?")

[chipnix]

deleted

[audiotools]

1. Why is allowing some samples to pass the clip level warranted in some settings but not others? Is this a mastering vs. sound design dichotomy?
Is there a "downside" to setting the ceiling level?

Hi Onoulk, thank you for your question. In order to clip the signal "correctly" and generate as few aliasing as possible, the signal is oversampled. If the signal is oversampled and clipped, the processed sample values may not match exactly when the signal is downsampled again, due to the ripple in the signal caused by filtering out the unwanted aliasing.

With StandardCLIP, I wanted the musician to have full control over the signal. If you want to avoid alias frequencies at all costs, you should not activate ceiling; there are mastering engineers who do not accept oversampling at all, but this is also a matter of personal taste.

For use in normal instrument or bus lanes, you can simply disable ceiling (as is the default setting).

Is there a way to automatically set the ceiling level to be the same as the clip level? (Why would one set it otherwise?")

There is a link button above the out and ceiling faders that you can activate. But again, in most cases you can just leave ceiling off.

[SARCASTICDAVE94]

I've used Standard Clip, and it can be quite good. Whichever clipper I'm using is on the 2 bus on Studio One 6.5 as an insert. I used the input Gain slider to increase the incoming signal between +6 to +9 dB while the clip slider was set to -3. I used soft clip pro with the soft clip saturator slider at 10%. On the far right next to the output meter, I set the ceiling to -1 dB and output was left at 0. Oversample was 2X.

How I got the right settings? I listened to the results, and watched the waveform results as I pushed the gain up. I decided 3 dB clipping was decent and liked the soft clip pro at 10% result as well. I could see the results in the waveform and used it to guide the settings. As long as it sounded fine, we're good.

A TP limiter gets the audio after the clipper. My incoming audio to the 2 bus is set intentionally about -18 dB, so that's why I needed high gain settings.