CLIPPERS + LIMITERS = MEGA LOUD !

welcome back today i'm going to tell you the difference between clipping and limiting why i use them why they're super important and why you should be using them i've been mastering for over 25 years i've probably mentioned that in a video once or twice before and when i started we didn't really limit things now uh the reason why that was is because we were going to vinyl going to cd you didn't have to be super loud so basically you would just go into the into the track would just go into the limiter and it would just shave a little bit of the top off just so that it was you're making sure you weren't going over the peak that was the main thing so that that's why cds from the 90s are probably 5 to 10 dbs quieter than tracks you'll hear today and then along came the tc finalizer and that changed it all for everybody because people started using it in their home studios hope studios started becoming more and then things started getting smashed and that's why we got the loudness war that's why everyone got super loud everyone's always wanted to be loud but why does that mean that clippers and limiters get you loud well the whole point is a limiter by definition is a compressor but it's very fast compressor and you and it's supposed to be able to get the track brick walling which means there is zero or wherever you want to set that to and then it goes in and it just keeps pushing in and pushing in and pushing in so you want this brick wall limiter to be super transparent that is what you get from a limiter you can change load settings for different genres different track sounds so that you can get it sounding as transparent as possible so one of the things you want to be able to do as a mastering engineer as a good mastering engineer is to be able to use the limiter really well so that it's super transparent so that you can push things into it still sounds loud still sounds dynamic that's what you want from the limiter now clippers very similar to a limiter your their gain they're putting gain on but what they're doing is where they've got the peaks going up they're just cutting the peaks off and by cutting the peaks off they're adding distortion they're adding saturation they're adding that sound so what you're doing is as it goes through the p through the peak goes through the point that you set the threshold it just shaves the peak off it doesn't like push it back it just shaves it off so what happens is the more you push into it it starts distorting more and more now that distortion can sound good because you really like that distortion sound you really like the way that clipper is making it sound but it can also on some systems sound really bad because if you use it in a bad way same with the limiter it's just going to sound crushed distorted and horrible so let's dive into the computer let me show you an example of a clipper and a limiter and then i'll show you how i use them in a very basic way you'll be able to use them in this way and then you'll be able to get your stuff pretty loud and also dynamic so let's chat let's get stuck in but before we get stuck in make sure that you have uh turned the like thumb below blue that would really help me out i'd really be happy if you did that so if you like my content please make sure you do that make sure you subscribe because as soon as i hit 50 000 if it's before christmas i'll be giving away a maselec eq so make sure you subscribe okay now let's get stuck in here we are in pro tools so i'll show you different clipper and limiter and show you the difference between the two we have a track here sent in from a v from a viewer i know people have been saying you're always using the same tracks if you want to send me any tracks please send them to demos streaky.com and then i'll feature them on here if you've got any bands or anything like that that'd be cool because most people are doing electronics things that they're sending in so happy to use anything so what is a limiter so think of a limiter as a brick wall limiter limiters are supposed to be super transparent which is why you have different lease attack times it's a it's a compressor so that's why you have got a attack times look ahead things like that there's all these limiters have different features this is the pro l standard in the industry and uh this is kind of pushing the sound into this so because it's a brick wall limiter we're pushing the sound in to the brick wall so think of it as distorting into the brick wall so as we play the track we're just going to start lifting the gain on the input to push into the limiter we're then going to change the settings on the compressor part of the limiter if you like to um to get this sounding so that it's as transparent as we can possibly get i'm not going to get into different settings here but um usually what you find is well what i found is that the default settings are always pretty good to start with because obviously if you're a plug-in manufacturer you want your default as soon as someone turns it on to be you know top notch so i always actually with this pro l i always have it in default setting i don't even bother using anything else i bring the release time down and play with the attack and stuff but the look ahead's usually okay true peak i always have the oversampling i said i wasn't going to get into settings but that's kind of the basics and then i play around these got different algorithms now you'll see this on loads of different limiters you can use different limiters you can stack different limiters there is a i'll link a video above to me doing that limited sandwich which is pretty cool way of limiting and yeah so this is essentially pushing in and you can see it is pushing the spikes down okay so that's what it's doing it's crushing we're crushing into it so as you can see this is a really good demonstration obviously that's now distorting to hell but you can see it's how it's pushing down the peaks so it's getting the peaks and it's pushing them down we're pushing into the ceiling which is here and then that is that is the gain reduction that is pushing the peaks down so now that is a limiter now let's get on with a clipper now this is a clipper that a uh someone in my facebook group it's a free group if you want to join it um there is a link below uh they mentioned this a couple of weeks ago and i've been playing with it a little bit since really like it's a great little clipper so what is a clipper doing now a clipper is you as the instead of as you see here it's this is zero now every time a peak goes over zero the clipper will do as it says and literally cut it off so let's just play this and i'll show you what i mean so we've got the peaks here so let's just bring the threshold of the clipper down and so anything that happens above the threshold is essentially just cut off now why this is good is because you're not pushing you're not changing the sound below the threshold you're not pushing into anything you're not adding gain you're just bringing it down and you're clipping but because this has got a little link it pushes the output up too so as you're coming down all of this space here is happening with the output so you can see the amount of gain reduction is how much i'm taking off and here you can see what's getting clipped so clippers basically will add a bit distortion will add saturation so the more you push them the more saturated the more kind of thicker the more crushed the sound's going to sound it's still going to get distorted but it's not going to be in the same way now a good way to do this is it gives you a really good perceived level because you're not crushing into it so you can use a clipper before a limiter so let's just show you how the clipped sound looks when you have it running before the limiter so for this i'll take the output to zero so i'll unlink that and i'll bring the threshold down so that it is literally clipping but not adding the gains it's not making up for what what we take what we're clipping off what we're taking off the top here and then you can see exactly how that looks in here so you can see that that is the clipped signal there it's just literally flat across so you can then bring this up and do the gain on here rather than doing the gain on the output there do the gain on the input so we're taking the clip signal and we're pushing that in the reason why this sounds good is because you've already got rid of the peaks so the limiter isn't dealing with the peaks the peaks have already been dealt with by the clipper the clippers clipped all the peaks off and then you just push the signal right up into the limiter so that's a really good way of using a clipper and a limiter together but i like to use a clipper also at the front of my chain as well because then you can take off some nasty peaks so that when you're going into compressors then that those peaks as i've just shown you here then you're going into a compressor flat like that so it's a really good way of getting something loud or perceived loud before you go into your equipment so clippers are super helpful they are handy they are overlooked a fair bit within mastering but i use them a lot i like them and using them in conjunction with a limiter is really cool but limiters are the main thing you need for mastering to get things loud so limiters learning how to use a limiter i would say get one limiter learn it really well so that you know the sound of it you know what you're going to get every time maybe stack a couple they all have their own sound the waves l2 had a certain pop sound this has got a sound so really it is about using the same one every time getting used to the sound of it and then using it in combination with clippers if you need to but you know sometimes the clippers can make everything sound a little bit flat and a little bit boring to your ear because it's got rid of the peaks so it's not always uh okay this is exactly the way you do it every time sometimes it can make the track sound a bit boring so really you need to have a play with them but i think that explains to you the difference between clipping and limiting if you like this video please make sure that you um press the like button below that will really help me out and if you want to go more in depth with limiting then follow the next video that's coming up it's called the limiter sandwich i think you're going to love it it tells you a really cheeky little trick that i use for limiting uh fair bit so check that out now see you on the next one bye

Channel: Streaky

Views: 37,832

Rating: 4.9539967 out of 5

Keywords: how to master, how to use a limiter, limiter tutorial, clipper tutorial, mastering clipper, clipping in mastering, how to master a song, mastering, mastering tutorial, mastering limiter plugin, tutorial, streaky tutorials, streaky mastering, clipping vs limiting, soft clipping vs limiting

Id: Tai0VW6FZnk

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020