limiter / clipper EXACT difference ??

[miro]

aloha

can someone explain the exact difference between a limiter and a clipper?
i believe to know what a limiter does but what's exactl¥ the clipper doing?

[Greg Reierson]

A clipper is a limiter with zero attack and release time constants.

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by Greg Reierson

A clipper is a limiter with zero attack and release time constants.

What Greg said - although there are indeed "soft clippers" that have a knee (sometimes even adjustable) for these parameters - although it could be argued that these are more "limiters" than "clippers". Anyway - a clipper basically lops off any transient that reaches the set threshold so that the wave form is "flat topped" at its highest points. Where as some digital limiter algorithms can "rescale" the audio so that the wave form doesn't get flat topped (at least as dramatically) even as average level is increased.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Table Of Tone]

In theory, it should be better to scale the waveform but it won't always sound better.
With limiters, you can almost transparently loose the nice transients!
You sometimes wouldn't even know they were ever there, if you hadn't heard the original mix.
I would normally turn to some kind of clipper if I wanted to avoid some of the digital stardust that a belted converter can make.
The clipper can sometimes allow you to not hit the ADC so hard and make up a little gain after it.

[miro]

thanks alot!

[Ben F]

Essentially a clipper will distort the signal more, but can actually sound snappier than limiting if used properly. Clipping was commonly used for FM and AM broadcasting before the transmitter to bring up the levels (along with compression).

Clipped waveforms are exceedingly high in THD, and will cause aliasing with most audio codecs. So a clipped waveform (or clipping the AD converter) may sound better in the studio, but will sound worse as and MP3 or on digital radio than using a limiter. Look ahead limiters are preferred when using codecs as they have a lower THD than clipping, and will not alias the system.

Having said all of that, you will find clipping the AD is very common. Most MEs are guilty (including me).

[Jesse Graffam]

Originally Posted by Ben F

Clipping was commonly used for FM and AM broadcasting before the transmitter to bring up the levels (along with compression).

It still is.

Originally Posted by Ben F

Clipped waveforms are exceedingly high in THD

It depends on the method used to clip. There's a number of distortion-masking clippers, a few are better than many.

Originally Posted by Ben F

and will cause aliasing with most audio codecs.

Actually, the aliasing is already there before coding.

Originally Posted by Ben F

So a clipped waveform (or clipping the AD converter) may sound better in the studio, but will sound worse as and MP3 or on digital radio than using a limiter. Look ahead limiters are preferred when using codecs as they have a lower THD than clipping, and will not alias the system.

If you don't hear the aliasing in the studio, try getting high quality headphone playback in it. If you're hearing aliasing on the radio, or on mp3 (likely you are then listening to the mp3s on headphones, right?), then it's already in your tracks.

[Table Of Tone]

I find there is a balance between how hard you hit the ADC and how much gain you make up using some kind of clipper.
If you get that balance right and make an MP3 from a 24 bit file, you can get it to sound pretty good for an MP3.

I'm biased because I personally don't like limiters and don't use em!
I like the punch left just the way the mix engineer intended.

The recording engineer spends a ton of time getting a killer drum sound on a track only to have the nuts taken out of it at the mastering stage, because of the use of a lookahead limiter at the end of his chain.

Not in my studio!