Clipping converters

[theBackwardsman]

This is all out of curiousity, so you dont need to slag me off
bout the lodness war whining, all I would like is to
know on a newbie level how the A/D converter clipping works
I mean step by step, how you set up your soundcard, and how the routing goes ?

[audiovisceral]

most mastering A/D have input volume, so you just turn that up til it clips.

otherwise i guess send it out to any analog gear with an output volume control and turn that up til it starts clipping the A/D on the way back in.

i think people generally go out to analog eq/comp, clip on the way back in, then apply their stereo expansion and brickwall itb after that.

though i would suspect you'd often prefer to clip after stereo expansion and limiting, that would take another d/a/d.

[theBackwardsman]

Thanks for the answer!
Will it make any difference, boosting the input on soundcard or
the output on external device? If controlling level from outboard, whats recommended? leaving the input as hot as possible or turning the input all the way down?

[Waltz Mastering]

... I'm not just slaggin you off, but

There is really know need to clip any converters to make things loud. 99% of the time this results in bad sound. I think some high profile mastering engineer mentioned they clip the converters once in a while and now everyone thinks it's common practice to make things louder. It Isn't.

There isn't any special set up or routing to do this. You basically turn up the output on whatever is feeding the converter until it clips creating square waves. Not good.

Sure if you have a lavry gold or a very high end converter there might be a little extra head room to push thing another db but generally clipping converters should not start to be the "new thing" people turn to to make things loud.

TW

[audiovisceral]

Originally Posted by theBackwardsman

Thanks for the answer!
Will it make any difference, boosting the input on soundcard or
the output on external device? If controlling level from outboard, whats recommended? leaving the input as hot as possible or turning the input all the way down?

well if your soundcard doesn't have an input knob that can be pushed above 0 and can only be controlled via software, you can't clip from that. so just leave the software turned up.

you'll need some analog outboard to boost the level in that case. anything that has a mastering grade signal clarity and output volume that goes above zero should work.

can't think of any cheap gadget that would do this though...

[hummer]

what in god's name are you talking about?

[kjg]

Originally Posted by hummer

what in god's name are you talking about?

shouldn't this thread really be called something like "clipping your Sound Blaster"?

[Bob Olhsson]

There are several older high end A to D converters that clipped reasonably transparently.

Most sound pretty awful.

[Lagerfeldt]

I find that clipping the A/D is not the most effective or most pleasing way of clipping.

[audiovisceral]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt

I find that clipping the A/D is not the most effective or most pleasing way of clipping.

how do you prefer to clip? voxengo elephant has a clipping algo, but i wasn't too impressed by it.

fyi, i am not advising anyone to clip their soundblaster. but i'm pretty sure big guys like vlad the impaler (vlado meller) have been using a/d clipping to get 'their sound' for years now, no?

[Lagerfeldt]

There's not a lot of "sound" involved in clipping, at least not anything good. It gets you volume at the expense of real transient information, narrower stereo image and some not too pleasant distortion if you go too far.

That said, done correctly it can sound better than limiting in many cases. But simply clipping your A/D isn't a recipe for success.

On a related note, check these files out. Read the PDF too.

Programmed for Distortion
Listen to the artifacts produced when hot CDs are sample rate converted or reproduced in a CD player.
http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/Pr...Distortion.zip

[theBackwardsman]

I was trying to avoid this kind of discussion as you can read in the first post, I support the loudness hype to a certain extent as I like the
effect of it.
But thats not the point AND I never said my goal was to reach professional results with my "soundblaster" A/D (sad how some of you always try to find a way to patronize )
I just wanted to know the technical procedure.
Thanks to you who straightened it out for me!

[Lagerfeldt]

No problem, try experimenting with other types of clipping than A/D, and do it at lower output levels to avoid 0 dBFS+ problems at the D/A stage.

Reading some of the TC articles (not this one in particular) will give you more insight into what NOT to do and what to look out for.

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by theBackwardsman

I was trying to avoid this kind of discussion as you can read in the first post, I support the loudness hype to a certain extent as I like the
effect of it.
But thats not the point AND I never said my goal was to reach professional results with my "soundblaster" A/D (sad how some of you always try to find a way to patronize )
I just wanted to know the technical procedure.
Thanks to you who straightened it out for me!

Umm... reading this thread, I don't think anyone was really patronising. Well, 1 post maybe. Anyway, those who replied understood your question, saw it was answered already and gave good additional advice. What a bunch of arrogant ******s.

I'll make myself an ****** too and give you some more advice you don't want: It's reasonably likely that clipping your sound card / converters won't produce the result you're looking for. 95% of converters don' clip gracefully at all. (Including many very high end converters.) If you want to try it out, go ahead of course. In case you find it doesn't give you what you're looking for, try GCLIP VST (it's a free VST plugin) or similar.

[kjg]

Originally Posted by theBackwardsman

But thats not the point AND I never said my goal was to reach professional results with my "soundblaster" A/D (sad how some of you always try to find a way to patronize )

o, boohoo.

ever considered a sense of humor? or even better: a matched pair! can do wonders for your music.

[tonmeister]

If you have a Lavry gold, then maybe.
The advantage of using a plug-in is: Oversampling, - can yeild much nicer sounding clipping, It can deal with intersample clips

[Lagerfeldt]

Oversampling is quite important, a problem with a lot of D/As today is the reliance on analog filters and less oversampling.