Clipping via outboard A/D, D/A?

[Huntley Miller]

Originally Posted by Nonlinear

One of the techniques for gaining loudness mentioned here a lot is clipping external to "the box" via hardware (out a D/A then clipped by A/D back in).

What do you gain by doing that vs. simply raising the gain ITB through a soft clipper plugin?

Clipping a digital gain stage or an A/D is hard clipping, which often times beats limiting.

[MASSIVE Master]

And some converters handle it quite well (while some others - don't).

[Nonlinear]

Originally Posted by Huntley Miller

Clipping a digital gain stage or an A/D is hard clipping, which often times beats limiting.

Understand, but what I'm not following is the advantage of sending the mix out through D/A, boosting, then back in through A/D. Why not just clip it "in the box" digitally?

[polybonk]

Because what you are "boosting" it with is high end mastering gear and you want to keep the impact of the sound because the job requirements are "loud" and clipping sounds better on this particular track.

[Nonlinear]

Originally Posted by polybonk

Because what you are "boosting" it with is high end mastering gear and you want to keep the impact of the sound because the job requirements are "loud" and clipping sounds better on this particular track.

Ok, so basically you are doing some audio processing "outside the box" then bringing it back in using the A/D as a peak limiter/clipper. Got it.

Now, if all your processing "gear" was software (ITB), is there any advantage to sending out/back through D/A-A/D for the clipping effect? In other words, do clipped converters produce a better sound than simply clipping a file with a wave editor?

[ORC]

I've found that Lavry D/A converters handle clipping quite well. i usually clip on rock, top 40 style, metal, hip hop, and top 40 style country. It is important to capure at 32 bit float or 64 bit float in the DAW so that the capture won't actually clip within the daw itself. Then I apply my final digital limiter 2db max, using oversampling and a ceiling of .2db to prevent digital overs, and intersample peaks when the file is downsampled to 24 bits.

[Greg Reierson]

Originally Posted by Nonlinear

Now, if all your processing "gear" was software (ITB), is there any advantage to sending out/back through D/A-A/D for the clipping effect? In other words, do clipped converters produce a better sound than simply clipping a file with a wave editor?

Different but not always better. Try something like GVST - GClip

[sat159p1]

I never do AD clipping. For me it was always sounding unnatural no mater what converter I used and no matter how hard (or soft) I clipped. I think the only bands that *can* need this are metal bands, and use it as an effect... Otherwise you can have pretty loud natural sound using digital limiter.

I like the Apogge thing on this. "Soft Clip Limiter" sounds better to me if I need to beat the converter hard on the input.

[polybonk]

GClip is pretty close to the damaged sound of high end converter clipping. Just like a different flavour and not quite as transparent. Run it at 96 and its sounds more transparent than 44.1. The only thing I don't like about GClip is the lack of visual measurement for knowing exactly how far you have gone over.

[bendermastering]

I never clip, tried it a lot of times and never liked it.

Much prefer using something like the Inflator than clipping!

[Ben F]

Depends mostly on the material, how dense or transient it is and the amount of distortion it can handle. Some of the top converters such as Lavry/Prism clip very nicely . A touch of clipping and limiting may often work better than just one or the other. Doesn't translate well to mp3 though...Not that this has stopped most of the square waved top 40 music selling well.

[ORC]

You right about slammed mp3's, Ben. I' supply my client's with Hi res mp3's along with their pmcd's, but I always leave an extra db at the top before rendering to mp3. This seems to help quite a bit, but its still a compromise.

[andremattos]

Lavry do the job well (Rock and others dense material)