Beginners guide to A/D clipping

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

All kinds of professional people get requests from "clients" to do stuff that is unethical, or bad workmanship. People turn down those requests all the time, and its that simple.

So basically what you are telling us is that you haven't had your first paying job yet. How old are you? 15?

You are not operating in a bubble, or in your own little universe,

but you most certainly are.

What you do affects the business as a whole, and you have a duty to behave honorably and responsibly with respect to the others in the mastering community as well.

Aaah the idealism of youth. So cute. With this amount of idealism now, you will be one of the better cynics when you grow up.

Unless you're just a total mercenary.

Gun for hire. Shooting down good mixes since 1827! And with pleasure!

I'm just trying to give some of the newer guys a little different perspective than the usual cart-load of excuses.

Ah yes kids your own age in your little backwater town are probably very impressed by your idealism.

That way maybe they don't have to end up with a pathetic gig that consists of receiving music tracks and boosting their volume past the point of distortion for lousy pay.

Entirely agreed! They should charge good money to destroy otherwise perfectly good mixes. No point in being a mercenary if it doesn't pay!

Maybe some people want a gig like that, but to me that's one trifling, lame gig. There are other jobs for people who only want to make money.

Send your mixes for TOTAL DESTRUCTION GUARANTEED!
100$ per track for preset 1 (Massive crushing with a touch of slam);
200$ per track for preset 2 (Dying a little inside one dB at a time);
300$ per track for our Slam it 'till You Hate It preset guaranteed to make your music so flat you won't even recognise it yourself!

All genres and styles accepted!

Check out our Classical Crunch service. Now we offer Audiophile crunch at 24bit/96Khz resolution! You have never heard crackle sound this good!

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Alistair

[UnderTow]

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

The first track I mastered got the group a record deal.

Amazing! That must be the very first time in the history of music that a group got signed because of the mastering and not because of the actual music. You must be really really good!

Alistair

[scraggs]

Smash 'em and Cash 'em, that's my motto.

*lowers threshold on limiter, gets rich*

[adamgonsa]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

To be honest, I'm a fan of great sounding "loud" records... If a record sounds like shite I simply don't buy it or listen to it...there's always that choice...

In concept, I think everything you're saying has merit, but the truth is not always the reality. Some of the stuff your speaking about are beyond the control of the people here. There are not to many ME's that prefer to hear their work on playback and cringe. That is never the goal.... and I would bet it's not any different for any of the higher profile ME's as well.

Very well put.

[Cheebs Goat]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

To be honest, I'm a fan of great sounding "loud" records...

Is this another way of saying "I'm a fan of great sounding records"? Does the "loud" enhance your enjoyment in any way that a twist of the volume knob would not replicate exactly?

And if not, then do you really mean "I am a fan of great sounding 'dense' records" or something to that effect?

[bryan k]

ok, this thread got de-railed pages ago......and is no longer talking about "beginners guide to AD clipping"

all i wanted to know was (from page 3 of this thread before it took a wrong turn)

So does this all only work if you have an analog (outboard) piece of gear?

i mean, i primarily do everything ITB, and have a Presonus Firestudio as my main preamps/inputs going into my DAW. Do i need some sort of other piece of gear to try this A/D clipping? or can i route the signal back into the Presonus and try to clip that going back in?

or am i stuck with just using plugin limiters/clippers ITB (like GClip)?

please dont throw tomatoes at me for such a noob question....i just want to know if it would work, and if it would sound decent....

[Nordenstam]

Originally Posted by Cursed Lemon

The only way this makes sense to me is if reconstruction filters use perceptual coding to predict what the waveform MIGHT have looked like, had it not clipped.

Perhaps my phrasing was a bit bad. The reconstruction can't know what was there before clipping occured. It's obviously not a declipper. But clipping itself is guaranteed to create to intersample peaks. Making the actual decrease in RMS-to-peak ratio less than the sample peak metering indicates.

Originally Posted by Cursed Lemon

Otherwise, this is uncomfortably like "magic" to me, unless DA converters automatically try to make sine waves out of square waves and this would happen even if it was well below clipping.

Bingo! That's exactly what happens in the reconstruction filter. With a bandwidth limitation of 22kHz, no harmonics can exist on any wave above 11kHz, they are all sines. The range between 5.5 and 11kHz may sport a first overtone, and so forth. Square waves have overtones at 3, 5, 7 etc times the base frequency. There needs to be at least a couple of overtones to resemble a square wave. This means that a wave have to be pretty low in frequency compared to the bandwidth limit at the top to come close to looking like a square.

Originally Posted by Cursed Lemon

What I also don't understand is how this would be of ANY consequence since it happens in the analog stage of reconstruction - the track would just be a fractional bit louder.

Many people do some sort of processing to the signal before it hits the DAC. MP3 being the most typical processing. Do some tests with clipped vs unclipped signal converting to and from MP3 and you'll see what the problem is.

The DAC problem is that it may not provide enough headroom to deal with levels in excess of 0dBFS. This happens frequently in consumer gear. Especially in low powered applications. Which is also where most people listen to MP3s! Ironically, this is typically not a problem in mastering grade converters.

PS: the post you quoted was from 2007.. This one's from 2008: Intersample peaks

[scraggs]

Originally Posted by bryan k

ok, this thread got de-railed pages ago......and is no longer talking about "beginners guide to AD clipping"

all i wanted to know was (from page 3 of this thread before it took a wrong turn)




please dont throw tomatoes at me for such a noob question....i just want to know if it would work, and if it would sound decent....

i'm not familiar with the presonus but i'm going to guess that clipping it probably doesn't sound that great. if you don't have any other analog outboard, i would say skip it and use ITB clippers. the clipper on the voxengo elephant sounds good. sorry, "good".

[Table Of Tone]

Oh Man....

If this thread was a train?

It got came off the rails somewhere in the the hillside N everyone on it got attacked by these weird trolls!

A lot of people got eaten but there's a few of us still here kickin' their stupid little asses!

[Masterer]

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

I actually think it is a little uncool of you to call me a "troll" just because I disagree with you.

Oh, believe me. It ain't cause you disagree with me.

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

There are a lot of people in the business that are very concerned about the bad effects of the loudness wars, so I am not exactly voicing an opinion that has no merit.

Really? I'm shocked. I've never heard anyone complain about loudness before... over the last ten years ... like every damn day.
You're breaking some serious ground here fella.

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

I am not "trolling" just because you don't like what I say, or just because I don't back down to your pushing, silly challenges, and so forth.

What exactly is silly about asking you to identify yourself and share with us the fruits of your labor? I'd really like to know who I'm talking to and what kind of records you have done. Maybe I'll go out and buy some of them. I still buy records.

You can see my name and it's easy to look up my discography.

I think it's pretty obvious why YOU would not share that information with us.

Perhaps I'm wrong.

We all know I'm not though, don't we.

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

We disagree, it seems, and we both have a right to state our view. I have not attacked your work specifically. Lots of people "big names" or "little names" choose to post anonymously, and it does not make their words any more or less true.

There are no "big names" that post here anonymously. Other than that, everything you say is true.

We disagree. We both have the right to our opinions. Your "words" may or may not be true.
The difference is I have credibility and you do not. THAT is what you have to live with when you choose to post anonymously. I stand behind everything I say with my professional reputation. I am accountable.
You do not and are not and THAT is why you are a troll.

Originally Posted by bloviocrates

I could just as easily call into question your intentions in making your identity known.

No, you could not.