BuzzCut (The Erosion Clipper)

[LusiD_Music_UK]

I really do appreciate the pushback and the chance to defend my claims. Have you actually tried the plugin? What do you think about how it SOUNDS? Do you think erosion clipping sounds better than normal clipping? I'd find that a lot more interesting

I am a bit busy this weekend but I promise to give it a proper test and tell you what I think when I have time Will also respond to your other questions

Cool!

"The most ironic outcome is the most likely"

I reckon you'll try it, love it, buy it and push it harder than anyone... hahaha

[El°HYM]

I wont get into this 'fight' & seeing the developer is really trying hard to satisfy the all 'claims' in this thread. Yet, I dont see 'analog noise' here, it should be digital, or emulated as there is nothing analog in a vst - plugin. I might been thinking way too far 'out of the box' here, who knows. This plugins is definitely an interesting one and should work in the proposed environment.

Let me just check the thread.... and..... More semantics?

Of course the noise is not "literally" analog - it is of course "digital" - because of course it is.
It's a VST plugin.
The idea is that erosion clipping should SOUND more analog/natural than normal clipping.

Thank you for saying it's interesting! I'm happy people are talking about it at least. Very positive reception for the most part

Pleasure.

[xx JPRacer xx]

I'm glad I'm not an audio developer on kvr. Don't give up little Jimmy, show those MFers!

[El°HYM]

Average Joe is already loving this plugin.

[bmanic]

KVR will not sugar coat things

Yea. I’ve just learned that today

It's what makes this place nr.1 in my book. You get all the crazies, the actual smart DSP experts, all the normies and all the audiophools (that'd be me!) in one sweet pot where you actually can speak your mind.. unlike certain other forums, especially those with blue and white color themes.

Only just now downloaded the demo and to my ears at least, your clipper does exactly what it says on the tin. Even if the erosion stuff didn't work (which it does!) this would be a very nice clipper with the way you setup asymmetric clipping. Super powerful and very flexible!

Bug in v1.0 is the input/output linking. For some reason it doesn't stay properly linked. It varies all over the place, output never quite matching input slider. Other than that, very solid release and a very useful plugin! Two thumbs up from me.

[bmanic]

After reading this, for me it's like:
- "Hey, try this deodorant, your armpits will smell good."
- "No, it won't. Only washing them will clean them."
- "Ok. I'm not saying they'll be clean, but it will mask the bad smell".
- "No. Only cleaning them will."
- "But masking the bad smell with a better smell is better than nothing and you can still wash them if you want."
- "No."

* English is not my native language.

Spot on!

[bmanic]

The funniest bit for me was that even after the developer finally conceded to the "misleading graph" point, they still had to blame the other guy/girl of bullying.

Very interesting how THAT one point, the misleading graph (don't get me wrong, it was a good thing to point out!), was your only take away. The other person WAS clearly refusing to even try to understand the point of the plugin. Yeah, probably not bullying per say, just being a complete rude ass in general. That was extremely clear from the very get-go.

The developer has been very transparent in absolutely everything he has been saying. Not even once has he been using any kind of snake oil tactics (unlike many other companies). He has constantly, over and over again, tried to state the exact point of the plugin.

What I find ironic is how absolutely NONE of the critics have actually TRIED the plugin and LISTENED to the results. Seems to be unfortunately very common among some self proclaimed DSP experts.. looking at methods, calculations etc. but NOT listening (both figuratively and literally). Funny how our brains are wired differently and yield different perceptions of what is and what is not relevant. But hey.. that's what makes the world such a great place for collaboration!

Is resulting sound is pretty darn aggressively noisy? Yup! Is it "better quality" than just oversampling the clipper. Absolutely not.

Subjectively, in my opinion, it is. It's vastly superior. Even at very low levels, I can clearly hear a big difference even on material that isn't EDM or anything crazy like that. This is why I've always had an issue with people calling aliasing "noise" and "harmless" when it's very low into the noise floor. It is not. Our brain does not at all interpret aliasing as common noise. It is something much much MUCH worse. It is down right nasty bullshit stuff that can wreck absolutely havoc on the harmonic structure of things. What's worse is that it almost always piles up in the frequency range where our hearing is most sensitive (the notorious 2 to 5kHz area) and just sounds awful when it's not there intentionally (aka samplerate reduction as an effect or a lo-fi vibe).

Shaped noise is pretty much always preferred. I'd bet my lunch money on it that in a double blind study with thousands of participants, noise would win a simple "which is better, A or B?" test every single time. I'm also quite convinced that part of "analogue magic" of some old school equipment, is in fact, the noise.

Anybody who has worked with dialogue tracks in films/movies knows how important it is to _never_ leave a "digital blank" anywhere. Our brains immediately catch it and goes "huh? something is wrong here!".

Experienced sound designers know to add noise to some presets, especially when dealing with highly resonant filters. Without it, it'll sound like crap. Noise is gooooooood.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Yeah I don't disagree. That statement is true for the more extreme case I tested for. With the aliases and noise both really loud and neither sound qualifying as "high quality" by any common standard. But that's not all it can do of course.

And yeah I've worked a lot with noise over the years. Didn't do much dialog work, but I did work on one audiobook some years back and the phenomenon you mentioned was really obvious indeed.

[BCollins]

Average Joe is already loving this plugin.

Average Joe´s clients like it even more.

[El°HYM]

My point was just, that similar to Dithering noise (which is pure digital) there is no such thing as analog, not even an analogy here. Its low-level random noise to reduce quantization errors, prominently known for its use with CDs. While now being 72 years old, I have witnessed the transition from analog to digital in person and can assure you that dithering was not used to make a CD sound more 'analog' but to reduce the more harsh sounding artifacts caused by digital audio. With that said, this is indeed an interesting concept and should have its use for sure.

Live long & prosper.

[LusiD_Music_UK]

I'm glad I'm not an audio developer on kvr. Don't give up little Jimmy, show those MFers!

The KVR forum nerds (love to my fellow nerds) are ruthlessly pedantic it seems! Thanks man. Little Jimmy's trying his best here

[LusiD_Music_UK]

KVR will not sugar coat things

Yea. I’ve just learned that today

It's what makes this place nr.1 in my book. You get all the crazies, the actual smart DSP experts, all the normies and all the audiophools (that'd be me!) in one sweet pot where you actually can speak your mind.. unlike certain other forums, especially those with blue and white color themes.

Only just now downloaded the demo and to my ears at least, your clipper does exactly what it says on the tin. Even if the erosion stuff didn't work (which it does!) this would be a very nice clipper with the way you setup asymmetric clipping. Super powerful and very flexible!

Bug in v1.0 is the input/output linking. For some reason it doesn't stay properly linked. It varies all over the place, output never quite matching input slider. Other than that, very solid release and a very useful plugin! Two thumbs up from me.

Awesome bro! Yea I do honestly enjoy a good heated debate. It's very exciting stuff! Baptism by fire!

Glad you've actually tried the plugin and like it! Thank you!

"It doesn't stay properly linked." ? What DAW and OS if you please? My god I thought everything was working when I put this out.... there's another one for the list. YAY

[kraster]

My point was just, that similar to Dithering noise (which is pure digital) there is no such thing as analog, not even an analogy here. Its low-level random noise to reduce quantization errors, prominently known for its use with CDs. While now being 72 years old, I have witnessed the transition from analog to digital in person and can assure you that dithering was not used to make a CD sound more 'analog' but to reduce the more harsh sounding artifacts caused by digital audio. With that said, this is indeed an interesting concept and should have its use for sure.

Live long & prosper.

Correct.

The fundamental principle in dithering and probably applicable here is that we are very sensitive to correlated non linearities ie. distortion. The artifacts are intrinsically linked with the signal. Our brains, being remarkably good pattern recognition processors are very sensitive to intermodulation, patterned artifacts and harmonics generated by these processes.

Noise by definition, is just that. It's independent of the source. Dithering works by decorrelating the quantization error by adding noise so the error is no longer a function of the signal.

Our brains are much more tolerant of noise, if they weren't then we would be driven mad by the amount of background noise that exists in the world!

[LusiD_Music_UK]

they still had to blame the other guy/girl of bullying.

This actually feels like some school yard BS. "Bullying" was a playful exaggeration martinvankoek. You KAREN. Like really? That wasn't clear from the laughing emoji and love heart etc? What are we doing? Do you not understand social cues?
I'm somewhat on the spectrum myself so I'd totally empathize with your... situation...

Subjectively, in my opinion, it is. It's vastly superior. Even at very low levels, I can clearly hear a big difference even on material that isn't EDM or anything crazy like that. This is why I've always had an issue with people calling aliasing "noise" and "harmless" when it's very low into the noise floor. It is not. Our brain does not at all interpret aliasing as common noise. It is something much much MUCH worse.

Thank you for all this bmanic! Lovely stuff! Do you want a job?
There's an opening in my marketing department...

[bmanic]

Subjectively, in my opinion, it is. It's vastly superior. Even at very low levels, I can clearly hear a big difference even on material that isn't EDM or anything crazy like that. This is why I've always had an issue with people calling aliasing "noise" and "harmless" when it's very low into the noise floor. It is not. Our brain does not at all interpret aliasing as common noise. It is something much much MUCH worse.

Thank you for all this bmanic! Lovely stuff! Do you want a job?
There's an opening in my marketing department...

Hah! You get all my gushing for free, with the caveat that the plugin is actually good &/or interesting/unique. You also get all the unfiltered Finnish vitriol when it's not.. even if I'd be your employee (which some companies have found out the hard way. Credit to FabFilter who still for some weird reason keep me occasionally on as a freelancer even while running my mouth constantly, sometimes very critically!).