Clipping converters

I have had an MPC4000 for nearly a year now and I got a Ren so I could use plugins. I am now at the stage where I can appreciate that pushing my mixes up against a limiter makes them sound bad so I'm learning about other methods to get loudness.

I have read that clipping your converters is a way of getting loudness without destroying the sound. There is also soft clipping with plugins but the converters thing is supposed to be better. You really need quality converters to do it. Afterwards you take the level down to about -18db because plugins like working at that level.

what I'd like to know is can I do this on an MPC4000? I understand the converters are good.

I don't know what I'm doing here do I play my mix out of the 4000 audio outputs with lots of gain and resample it with the Ren? or play it loud out of the Ren and resample with the 4000? Or am I wasting my time?

I'm gonna jump in here and just say WHAT?!?

Clipping is a terrible thing, ESPECIALLY in the digital realm. The clipping "trick" you are looking for was mostly done on older outboard analog gear. Due to the way they are constructed, analog gear makers had to compensate for some of the mistakes human-beings make. Ground-loops, power surges, etc, are very bad for digital equipment but with analog gear makers they knew to include a bit of room for error. This is where the "myth" of clipping came into play. Clipping analog gear at it's peak will create a type of distortion or over-driven type sound if you will. Sometimes it sounds great, other times and situations it will sound like shit. Some products will AD/DA converters will give you the illusion of that "warmth" you get from clipping the input. (S950, MPC3000, etc.)

Now, is it a good practice... That is for you to be the judge. I am going to lean to the side of NO!

Answer me this, why are needing to clip a "high-end digital device" like the MPC4000. It should have more than enough headroom to increase gains.

To answer the second question about the REN....

Why the heck aren't you opening the MPC4000 files in the REN and work from there?

I understand that it is conventional wisdom that it is taboo to clip anything digital as it makes it sound rubbish but I have read that some mastering engineers never use limiters, they "clip their converters" because it is a better way of getting some loudness. Maybe MPCs do this anyway and that is part of why they sound good.

anyway, do I send too high gain signal from digital to analogue or the other way round?

I have mixed some of my 4000 projects in the Ren an it's all good. I don't have headroom issues or anything, I'm just reading and experimenting with some different things to try and get a bigger sound. I know I ask some dumb questions but I have learnt a lot that way

I found the 4000 has a great punchy sound but the Ren seemed better in the top end, a more kind of DAW sound perhaps, so I tried transferring my mix down from the Ren to the 4000 and playing it as a sample into the Ren sampler to try and get the best of both worlds. That didn't really work.

I suppose I need to find a mastering forum

A good mix will make your sound BIG, but mixing is an art form. Sometimes it just comes together, most times its a pain-staking deal.

There are other VSTs and cheats that you can use to make a track sound BIGGER. But the mix and placement of tracks is going to help best.

You will find hundreds of tutorials on creating a BIG sound across the web, and there are some tips in the Production Techniques area.

Best of Luck,

Mike Boogie wrote:Clipping is a terrible thing, ESPECIALLY in the digital realm. The clipping "trick" you are looking for was mostly done on older outboard analog gear.

+1. When you're just in the digital realm, clipping a channel is equivalent to limiting. Just flattening anything above some threshold. It's only with certain analog gear (or plugins meant to emulate it) that you're going to get anything different or special.

blackeye wrote:I understand that it is conventional wisdom that it is taboo to clip anything digital as it makes it sound rubbish but I have read that some mastering engineers never use limiters, they "clip their converters" because it is a better way of getting some loudness. Maybe MPCs do this anyway and that is part of why they sound good.

anyway, do I send too high gain signal from digital to analogue or the other way round?

I understand where you're coming from and I do know of the "clipping the AD Converter" practice for mastering and several engineers who do this. Typically an engineer will slam the AD/DA's converter (or an analog preamp before the AD) when recording into a 32/64 Bit floating point DAW or if they are desperately trying to flatten a track or genuinely like the sound of the converter's distortion. However this is an incredibly illegitimate and lazy way to master that is somewhat like back in the days when engineers would slam the master bus compressor to play back "radio mixes" for clients in control rooms. Ultimately you want to avoid mastering this way as it won't give you any more volume than 0dBFS, it will merely add harmonic excitement to the track and raise the noise floor as the peaks of your audio will be flattened.

If you really want a "fatter" & flatter master trying pumping the stereo 2 track (or stems) through a chain of 4,5, or 6 compressors all working with light ratios, light thresholds, and hard knees, and add a slight amount of output gain in each module. The final compressor should act as a soft limiter with a ratio of 8:1 or 10:1 with an incredibly light threshold (-1dBFs to -.3 dBFS*) to prevent the signal from reaching 0dBFS.

*.3dB of headroom is typically left to account for inter sample peaks that can occur in digital audio

yeah, a lot of limiters (digital pluggin ones im talking about) can be a great tool... but more as a safety net. I think you should try some multi band compressors or something else to do that job instead. Actually many tools can achieve that... but don't rely on brick walling your sound with some clothes line limiter and extra gain.

digital clipping sounds bad, but a lot of these modern compressor pluggins are designed to do some over drive in a good sounding way so maybe explore that.


Then you have some fancy compressor pluggins that shit the bed when you run anything above -6db through them.

mr_debauch wrote:Then you have some fancy compressor pluggins that shit the bed when you run anything above -6db through them.

It's funny because it's true!