Some people say clipping distortion is inaudible, some say it’s the true secret of really “loud” mastering, some say it’s a powerful creative effect, others that it’s the spawn of the devil. So who is right, and why ? In this show we talk about:
- What clipping is, and the difference between the analogue & digital varieties
- When and why we use it
- Whether you can repair clipping damage
- The difference between clipping and limiting
- Why clipping & saturation are NOT the secret of "analogue warmth"
Links
Ian & Ethan Winer discussing digital clipping on Facebook Part 1 & Part 2
(Please don’t add any more comments, this conversation has run it’s course !)
Clipping – what is it, and what does it sound like ?
Ian & Steven Slate discussing FG-X “transparency”
(Again, please don’t post on the thread)
REAPER Blog Video - Using a clipper in Mastering
A little precision here about what you guys say between 19 and 20 minutes,
Yes, even harmonics are the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc harmonics and sound more natural.
But odd harmonics are still mathematically related to the fundamental, as opposed to what Joe said. They are the 3rd, 5th, 7th harmonics, etc.
One rarely comes without the other in the real world. Tape for example, is known to create more odd harmonics, and still sound good to our ears.
I think even-dominated harmonics can be louder without sounding unnatural, compared to the odd ones that we can hear more, that's why we 'like' better even harmonics.
But the ugly and harsh harmonics that clipping does are much higher. More clipping, more harmonics, and harmonics much higher comes up. They sound inharmonic for us, out of tune because they are less related to an actual note in the equal temperament of western music. 11th, 12th, 13th and higher sound ugly and harsh. They are still mathematically related though, not random noise yet! Juste out of tune, out of the equal temperament, not musical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic#Harmonics_on_stringed_instruments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament
Bonus: a good read (and listen) about harmonics in gear:
http://www.mixedbymarcmozart.com/2014/10/23/compression-think-part-1-music-tube-compressor-royal-harmonics/
Cheers, thanks for this podcast!
Thanks for clarifying, Simon.
And as always an insightful podcast!
The following is my personal opinion about why clipping, and other procedures are being used more in mastering. I sincerely hope that I do not cause offence to anyone.
I think the music industry is suffering from PTSD due to the loudness wars, speed rate of new technology and software advances, and the uncertainty of where we are heading musically. The result being dissasociative behaviour in recording, mixing and mastering, and the overlapping of these three.
Even taking into consideration a difference between USA, British and European techniques, we seem to be moving further into unmusical sounds. Clipping et al are an example of a falsehood and I believe misuse of DAW by users who have no idea of the difference between a mix or the master, and some misguided professionals.
Without jumping into a huge rabbit hole, artistic license in mastering can hardly justify sonic destruction. Surely that is what all the electronic wave based plugins are about, e.g., soft-synths, decimator effects et al, used at the recording/mixing stage.
That's not to say that artistry should not be used in mastering, but that we should question whether the integrity of the mix suffers if we go too far.
Historically we are at an evolutionary point, where artists have more at their disposal than ever before, and we are seeing more people recording and mixing in home studios. I believe that home recording will become so finely tuned that mastering will either be unnecessary or require little work. The likelihood of mastering being done in a home studio by the artist is a huge possibility.
We have to start building acceptable guidelines now, or we may end up with chaotic consequences where anything goes.
Thank you for the podcasts. I hope these will become the principles for anyone interested in creating music in a home studio, whether recording, mixing, or mastering.
It seems that this show veered into mixing territory somewhat. Not that that's a problem however, I enjoyed the discussion. I have avoided intentional clipping altogether, probably on idealogical grounds more than anything. Everytime I have experimented with it it just sounds ugly to me. I can hear it in other peoples work (either in mixing or mastering) and I think it's a legitimate colour but not one I would choose, at least at the mastering stage.
Having said all that, implied in the discussion was that the clipper would typically be before the limiter, to avoid pumping.Would there be a case for using them in the opposite order?
I am a saturation geek and I don't agree with many things you are discussing in this episode.
Although Hard Clipping creates very obvious high overtones, there's nothing unnatural about them. These are simply ODD harmonics, like tape but brighter. Or like a squarewave of a synth. If you hard clip a sine wave, you get a square wave. Some synth are able to create this polyphonically like Reason's Thor synth. This way you can shape a sine into a square using hard clipping. And that sounds just like any other square wave.
When using Hard Clipping you can also apply some LP EQ to remove the harsh top end. That in fact should give you soft clipping. So it's all very much related, soft, hard, recitify, unipulse, bipulse, all sorts of clipping. It will generated either EVEN or ODD harmonics or a mix between the two. Just basis overtones I would say.
In my opinion EVEN is not sounding better or more musical than UNEVEN/ODD. It's like saying a 5th sounds worse than an octave. UNEVEN can create that lovely tape sound for example. And most of the time a mixture of ODDS and UNEVENS sounds best.
If you take EVEN harmonics from an A3, what you get is:
#1 A3 (root)
#2 A4
#4 A5
3 octaves. Not very funky right?
Now let's do ODDS, using A3 again:
#1 A3
#3 E5 (oct+5th)
#5 C#6 (2 oct +3rd)
Interesting powerchord plus a major third 2 octaves higher. Because of the 5th interval in ODDS compared to an octave in EVEN harmonics, ODDS offer fatness to a sound imo. It's the power chord harmonic 🙂
Btw do you notice the musical tones which ODD and EVEN harmonics actually are?
EVEN:
#1 A3 (root)
#2 A4
#4 A5
#6 E6
#8 A6
etc
ODD:
#1 A3 (root)
#3 E5 (oct+5th)
#5 C#6 (2 oct +3rd)
#7 G6 (2 oct +7th)
etc
Guitar amps for example create both ODD and EVEN harmonics. It is a total myth to say EVEN is musical and ODD is unmusical. Just try it yourself. I have done many experiments with overtones. ODD and EVEN are simply different sounding overtones, but neither of them sound bad or unmusical. That's a total myth. It's all 12 tone stuff. Music with very basic calculations.
You say in the show that hard clipping removes some of the low frequencies. That should never happen! Hard and soft clipping in fact is generating, adding, overtones and are not killing any root/fundamentals. That can happen only when using Unipulse or Recity on extreme settings. But with hard/soft clipping it's 100% ODD harmonics leaving the root/fundamental in tact. What you are hearing is simply the added midrange ODD harmonics which become very loud when clipped. Our ears are focussed on the midrange, so that's what you're hearing, your ears are fooling you. No bass frequencies are killed or suppressed by clipping, it's just the added midrange which makes you believe so.