Quote:
Originally Posted by absrec  Allright. I've been waiting for an opportunity to ask about this and this seems like a great place/time.
I watched a friend of mine bounce down a mix one time. The mix was printed to a stereo track in PT. Before bouncing, he took the fader that the mix was on and turned it all the way up to +6 or maybe even +12! I looked at him strange and said "do you do that all of the time?". He said "Yeah, 'cause otherwise you have to turn your stereo up too much." I just shook my head and said "won't you get digital clipping without some kind of mastering limiter like an L1?". He said that this is the way he had always done it.
Next, we went out to his car and listened to it. I was sitting there ready to say "I told you so". Sure enough, it came on and I didn't hear any clipping! I was listening hard, too! It definitely sounded like a mastering limiter was catching the transients from the kick and snare, but it really sounded fine. And it had balls, too! I'm still scratching my head after that one.
I explained my thoughts on this to him and showed him the way I would bounce the mix. We used the only limiter he had available which was Maxim. I have more experience with the Waves L1 than Maxim, but I'm sure it was fine for our purposes. For one, we couldn't get it as loud without it sounding shitty. And the original "clipped off" version just sounded bigger. I agreed with him on that.
Anyone have any experience with this phenomenon?
-Aaron |
Your friend was just doing simple clipping at a digital gain stage. Sometimes this can indeed sound cleaner than clipping at the input of the ADC. It can also sometimes allow things like snares and kicks to retain their sharpness better than the same amount of gain reduction as using a limiting algorithm. As always what technique works best for attaining high average level with minimum of artifacts will vary with the track.
Best regards,
Steve Berson