🔴4 Clipping Plugins, SAME Algorithm | Submission Audio Flatline, Boz Little Clipper, GClip, FreeClip
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
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When testing these four clipping plugins, I DISCOVERED that they use THE EXACT SAME hard clipping ALGORITHM! And I can PROVE it.
Given the AMAZING REVIEWS for some of them, I figured it was important to SHARE THESE FINDINGS with everyone!
This video dives DEEP into clipping plugins in general, the ARTIFACTS and ALIASING they add to music, HOW to MINIMIZE HARSHNESS, and finally some PROVEN METHODS to help us decide what is ACTUALLY BEST for our MUSIC.
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💥PLUGINS💥
🔗DDMF Plugin Doctor: bit.ly/3cnbTMj
🔗Boz Digital Labs Little Clipper: bit.ly/3iqtfvN
🔗Submission Audio Flatline: bit.ly/2LiB5JV
🔗Free Clip (Great Free Plugin): bit.ly/2XArhxg
🔗GClip (Another FREE plugin): bit.ly/35bkDS9
🔗IK Multimedia Meter: bit.ly/3gCIdxg
🔗Bertom EQ Curve Analyzer (FREE DDMF alternative): bit.ly/2LZBNeK
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
3:02 Sine Sweep Tests
5:23 Artifacts
5:50 Proving The Same Hard Clipping Algorithm
8:15 So What Does This Mean For Us?
8:25 Is It The Same For A Song?
9:10 Clipper Settings For Test
10:07 Clipper Shootout With Song
11:00 Song Null Test
12:02 Aliasing and Fixing It
13:37 Oversampling
14:03 Plugin Differences With Oversampling
16:05 Nature of Null Tests
16:50 How Do We Know Which Plugin Is The BEST?
18:02 Analyzing Artifacts With Sonic Visualizer
18:52 How To Read A Spectrogram
20:23 Spectrograms of Clipping Tests
24:00 Recap of Important Concepts
HASHTAGS
#TUTORIAL #PLUGINS #METAL
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
3:02 Sine Sweep Tests
5:23 Artifacts
5:50 Proving The Same Hard Clipping Algorithm
8:15 So What Does This Mean For Us?
8:25 Is It The Same For A Song?
9:10 Clipper Settings For Test
10:07 Clipper Shootout With Song
11:00 Song Null Test
12:02 Aliasing and Fixing It
13:37 Oversampling
14:03 Plugin Differences With Oversampling
16:05 Nature of Null Tests
16:50 How Do We Know Which Plugin Is The BEST?
18:02 Analyzing Artifacts With Sonic Visualizer
18:52 How To Read A Spectrogram
20:23 Spectrograms of Clipping Tests
24:00 Recap of Important Concepts
Digital hard-clipper:
if sample > threshold:
sample == threshold
The end.
The End :D:D:D
Exactly.
dUDe iT mIMickS tHe BeHAviOur Of a 10 O00 d0Llars cOnVerTer u JuST dOn'T GEt iT
@@benjaminmichaut9996 wHaT iS fKiNg wRoNg wItH yEw
as a plugin dev i'm a bit surprised that it's actually news to anyone that there are not different hardclipping algorithms, but just differences in anti-aliasing filters, but ok. one thing to note: nulltesting on oversampled audio must be taken with a grain of salt because filters introduce latency and we don't know how good the devs compensated for that. it could perfectly null out if it was just more aligned in time. zoom in on the waveform to check. also some devs don't use linear phase filters for that. that would upset the nulltest a lot as well. and it's not just clippers that mostly vary in quality by their anti-aliasing filters. this is also common in distortion, saturation and compression too. even some modulation effects, where you wouldn't expect it, benefit from oversampling
this is all what we should be focussing on. Also, different filter implementations have their own pro's and cons. I'd recommend looking at phase plots and impulse plots in plugin doctor to reveal more about what method they are using. Aliasing is one problem, but oversampling has its own issues too and there will always be compromises to be made.
algorithms such as Ozone Maximiser/IK Stealth Limiter/Pro L2 are also worth looking at, you can see how they circumvent some of these issues of phase/ringing
I am only a producer/musician/mixer and I did not know that there are not different hardflipping algorithms so I found that extremely interesting! And now I am wondering why Flatline is so overpriced for a plugin semi-okay vst that looks like Pro-L haha!
@@Ledjent great question. however i think that it's not entirely clear if it's really worse than free clip. there are other qualities to a plugin than the upsampling filter. like.. how much latency, ram and cpu does it need to get to the desired effect? how is the workflow? (in freeclip you don't have a shape-knob, but just select between different waveshapers). i use freeclip as well and i'm very happy with it, but we can't jump to conclusions too quickly. still it's really nice to see that a free plugin can be so powerful. a lot of newbie producers nowadays believe you have to have the latest and greatest plugins to be good, but free plugins can often be at least just as awesome
@@Beatsbasteln all great points! These things can all outweigh the sound depending on the project.
@@eds4754 Thanks for the great comment Ed. I have looked at some of these things using plugin doctor and the oversampling/antialiasing in flatline seem to be unpredictable when going from 1X to 4X - at least when compared to the others (changes in gain/EQ/phase/etc). Wish my trial wasn't expired or I would show some figures 😊
I love being able to watch your videos and see you scientifically show how things work. Well done, sir. Thank you for your time making these!
Time well spent! So happy to share this with all of you. Thanks for your time!
Thanks for the great video, hope there is more to come!
Well heck. Who would have thought it. Definitely gonna be toying with FreeClip a lot more and scanning some other clipping tools I have! Thank you for taking the time to study through all of this!!
Glad to inspire you to experiment! cheers!
Excellent! This is very helpful! Thank you for all the work you had to do to make this video!
Totally objective. Pure gold! Thx...
Was looking for a simple free clipper AU, Free clip seems to fit the bill perfectly. Thanks for showing us all these tests!
Absolute gold!! Thanks for objectivity \m/
Thanks for your time! Glad you found it helpful 😊
This is so good.
I never jumped on the flatline train, because all I saw was marketing hype and no documentation or user manual documentation to support their claims.
Thanks for the kind words Nicholas! Glad you found the video enlightening! Always a good reminder that we should be using our ears :) Cheers man!
Great video! Thanks man.
You are amazing my friend, thank you!
Amazing video!!! Thanks for this analysis!!! I'm gonna recreate these steps for some of the plugins i more commonly use!
Glad it was helpful!
you're absolutely right, and it cannot emphasized enough - and there's one reason to it in its entirety:
if you do pure hardclipping (and no additional processing like oversampling/filtering - which if you'd do would not be pure hardclipping anymore), that means you simply dismiss every part of the signal that shoots over the given threshold. that's IT. and there's only one way to do that. just as simple. for pure hardclipping there simply is ONLY one mathematical algorithm (actually the most easy one there is). you simply cannot achieve this most easy process in any other way . again - you simply dismiss the signal part that shoots over the threshold. sample accurate. there's no release, no attack or ANY magic happening there. you either are clipping or you don't. hence all clippers that perform pure hardclipping are sounding EXACTLY the same and will ALWAYS NULL THE SAME SIGNAL, no matter what.
Thanks for that. The best video I've watched in months.
Wow thanks so much for the kind words!
Holy shit, I'm not a metal head at all but this dude knows his stuff - Congrats to a hugely useful video regardless of the genre one prduces in and THANK YOU!
I love your video and thanks for the work you put into it.
My pleasure!
Wow that’s pretty crazy! G-Clip is the only one of these plugins I have any experience with, but this makes me want to try my own tests against some of the other clippers I have. Awesome video!
I was really surprised as well! After playing with free clip some more, it's really powerful! Glad you enjoyed the video! Cheers!
If you do an update, it would be great to add standardclip with 128x oversampling and it's selectable filtering (go to settings if you have the plug-in). So far, I think it's the best, but as a lot of comments point out, there are always trade-offs.
Thanks for this video. I suggested this clipping plugin comparison to a friend and he showed me this video.
I use clipper A LOT. And Freeclip has been my go to for anything in a session. For mastering i tend to use kClip3. It seems like it can handle low frequencies better.
But i tried out Flatline the other day and yes, didnt hear a difference to Freeclip. Good to know! Thanks again!
KClip is pretty special - I also tested it out and it responds differently than these 4. It's a great clipping plugin. Cheers!
Pretty remarkable, thanks Bobby!
sick video! Glad i use free clip :D
thanks mate, you just saved me some money ;)
perfect... loved your video man.
I wish you did the chirp test by hard clipping a high end converter though.
cheers
I need to think of the best way to do the comparison. That has a lot of tricky things to consider... Definitely wouldn't null, but we could do a shootout maybe. Thanks for the suggestion!
@@RaytownProductions btw iv done multiple clipping tests from all the plugs I have vs my converter once and realized my converter was the most transparent of them all.
I've been using FreeClip on pretty much every mix for over a year now. Good to see it does well in a scientific comparison!
Yeah it's really, really clean. Definitely something I use all the time.
I did your sine sweep test with all my clippers and Standard Clip at x16 oversampling was the only one that was audibly artifact free. Thanks 😁👍🏾
I've heard great things about Standard Clip. Glad you got something from the video!
I like too much this explanation and thanks for the subtitles. You have a new subscriber
Thanks for watching 🙂
I love videos like this! My wife says „thank you“.
that was great! it was really interesting to see the results, but also to learn about WHY those results happened. i'm gonna have to start checking stuff more, i'm definitely guilty of being susceptible to hype. also, i really hope that people actually watch this all the way through instead of just getting a couple minutes in and making up their mind about something
Thanks so much man! Really appreciate the kind words. I completely agree - I know the video is long, but the parts toward the end are so IMPORTANT! Especially the Aliasing stuff and how to prevent it! Cheers man!
Thank you man.. now im saving my money🔥🤝🤝
Thanks for watching! Best of luck with your music 🤘
@@RaytownProductions 🙏🙏🔥🔥
Perfectly rational video in an era of total marketing bs! Btw, I recommend Toned-Max which goes beyond generic clipping types.
Isn't that an EQ plugin????
Trying not to look like Fabfilter 😆
@@tonytemple8195 Sorry, I meant to say Clipped-MAX
wow indeed ur a real scientist!
Subbed. This is good.
thank you
Nice stuff! Just a little input on the null test results while using over sampling. You may be getting some latency between clippers due to the over sampling. I would print the results and then zoom in to the waveforms making sure they line up perfectly before doing the null test. I don’t think it I’ll give you a perfect null due to the yellow spectrum graphs you went through but it may work out to where you only hear the aliasing differences.
More of these types of videos please!
Given the amount of positivity, I think I might just have to do that 😉
What differences do you get once you start making the clipping curve softer?
You get more harmonics with a softer curve but also start loosing transients. You can see for yourself with this method:
Run a tone generator on insert 1 of a track. Then place a clipping plugin on insert 2. Place a graphic analyzer on insert 3. Many digital EQ's have built in analyzers or Voxengo Span is a free option.
Run the tone generator at 300 Hz or which ever frequency you prefer. Push the gain inside the clipper. +12 dB or more would do.
Keep an eye on the graphic analyzer. With a hard curve you should see only the 300 Hz tone. Once you start adjusting to a softer curve you will see harmonics being formed.
A softer curve (from 0 - 25%) gives you the best balance between nice harmonics and retaining enough transients.
I've been using Freeclip for years. One of the best plugins because it doesn't color or screw with your transients when you need more loudness because it doesn't compress. It's just digitally clips the ceiling you set.
I'm now using V-Clip. It's only $15, by Venn Audio, the developer that made Freeclip, which I used for free for years until Big Sur MacOS just recently wouldn't recognize my copy of Freeclip and would't let it load. So I had to go on a mad hunt for a good clipper, worried I'd have to pay through the nose.
After seeing Raytown's video below, which pretty much proves that Freeclip's aliasing was better than the more expensive clippers, and that they all are using the same clipping algo, I then knew I needed to get my next clipper from the maker of the one I've been using for years. So went to Venn Audio's site and tried the V-Clip to see if it clipped as well, and it turned out that V-Clip is essentially Freeclip on Hulk steroids. It's fantastic!
Had I known I could get that for $15 I would've bought it a long time ago. I'm a fan of clippers giving me good levels down in the mix on certain things without destroying my transients. I also use one just before the final limiter, giving a nice finish to the mix without overdoing it. Seeing this video below was the godsend that motivated me to look at the other line of clippers that Venn Audio had after my copy of Freeclip stopped working on Big Sur. Man, I was desperate to find a replacement when Freeclip stopped working. I'm addicted to its critical utility.
Great video so at least we know for sure we can buy whatever is cheapest or suits our technical needs (vst3 etc)
Exactly.
Great video, and actually kind of a bummer since I do mostly use Boz Little Clipper haha.
I'm somewhat curious about what the results would be on the soft clipping side of things?
No reason to be bummed! I also use Boz little clipper - there are lots of great features I didn't get to talk about like the Mid/Side clipping. The interface is also really nice for my workflow. I still use it all the time on drum buses. Just be sure to TEST against others in your sessions and pick the best!
Nice
I love this first line….Bobby for the win, lol. Love your content buddy
You absolutely are a freaking genius! If you have time please, put all these stuff as white papers in your website and then publish a book!!
What do you think would be the disadvantages of using soft clipper apart from the distortion they add, some say it makes the song feel smaller, what do you think?
Awesome video! Thanks for saving me some cash!
Instant subscribe!
Happy to have you here Sean. Welcome 🙂
THX for saving mit the 129 bucks. nice to know that my little clipper also clips like the 10k one ;) cheers
super interesting video thanks, what are your thoughts on kclip or voxengo clippers, and what is the golden rule of thumb with appealing oversampling on plugins in general?
Hey thanks for watching! Kclip was also pretty awesome but it didn't null like these clippers in the video so it's different. The aliasing artifacts were much reduced when KClip was oversampled, so it seemed to do better than the ones compared in the video (except for maybe free clip). KClip has a lot more options than any of these plugins so I would say definitely try it out and do a blind test to verify if you like the sound for your song.
Usually, more oversampling is better. BUT like I showed in the video, some antialiasing filters might not be made well and may cause more unpredictable aliasing artifacts. The only way to know is to test like I show in the video and verify with your ears 🙂
Hope that helps!
@@RaytownProductions Sure is and thank you :-)
Kclip from Kazrog is my clipper, and I stand by it! I love the interface, allowing you to see exactly how much you're clipping. It works great, too! I'm using a snare drum called "Liquid Death Snare." It may be the best snare drum I've ever heard!!! The problem is I couldn't get the volume out of it. It was drowning in the mix, and saying it was clipping. I used some subtle clipping with Kclip. It sounds the same to the ears, and allowed me to get a lot more volume.
that's why i use ddmf metaplugin with my heavy harmonic saturation plugin emulations from plugin alliance. Also what setting did you use on free clip for the first example to compare it to the submission one.
I show the exact settings in the video. It's right before the song test. you can't see it but the threshold is dropped -10.
@@RaytownProductions ok thx and good video
The difference may not be as obvious across a whole mix as it might be soloing instruments I believe possibly due to the music masking the distortion or flab. I soloed and looped a kick drum pattern and switched between the clippers and I can definitely hear the difference in the clippers. I'm no scientist but that's what my ears are telling me. I was not using metal music to test it rather some pretty basic electronic kicks by themselves. The difference in tone and tightness on the kicks to me was representative of the overall flavor of the plugin (at least around those frequencies). I couldn't hear that in a cluttered mix. Between Kclip and Flatline for example, the kick thru Flatline to me was tighter and punchier while Kclip wasn't quite as tight or punchy. That said, I also found I was able to nearly match Flatline's sound using klangfreund's LUFS meter followed by Kclip with it's input boosted by 2db. My half-assed experiment but it worked.
mad genius
Thank you! Hope you got something from the video. Cheers man.
I'd say it doesn't matter what you might "hear with your ears" in this case - just use the one with the workflow you like best
also note:
if you use oversampling in pure hardclippers, be aware that due to the filters you'll actually overshoot. so if you perform pure hardclipping on the masterstage at latest stage (which is where you would only use the clipper in the masterchain), and you would want to clip at -0.1dbfs, you might nevertheless overshoot due to the filters. so my advice is, don't use oversampling in clippers at all if you're using it do gain loudness at the end of the mastering chain. if your mix is well balanced, you most likely won't hear a difference, if you dose healthy. if you do, you either drive the clipper too hard, or you did something wrong in the mix, which the clipper in the master unveils.
That is a great point that I didn't mention. You absolutely are right about possible overs from upsampled clipping. You would also get intersample overs if you use the clipper at the end of your mastering chain. I would recommend putting a good limiter after that can detect those intersample overs like Fab Filter Pro L2 as a safety net. BUT you will start softening your transients. Again, we need to use our ears to see what would sound the best given the song. Thanks for the good discussion!
wow. just wow
I'll still go with Flatline.
One reason is the UI of the plugin & the fact that it's easy to use.
Flatline is also Hi-DPI (it looks clear on 4K displays).
Workflow is very important as well! I'm happy using the free ones :) Thanks for the comment.
Sort of unrelated question about null tests… a lot of times when people talk about Neil testing they say “ the difference is way down at” what ever Db they consider low. And say so you wont be able to hear that. But isn’t the difference going to be at the peak amplitude as well as the the lowest. So would even something with the difference signal way down at the noise floor say two or three decibels, wouldnt that still be audible? LMK your thoughts on this
Audio is tricky sometimes haha! When we say the difference is very low and near the noise floor, what we mean is that the differences impact the signal in a very minimal way - on the order of the random noise in the signal. So if you take that very small amount of difference and add it to the top of the waveform, you get a result that essentially just sounds like noise on top of the signal. So in a blind test, you wouldn't be able to differentiate the differences between the clean and processed signals. Hope that helps!
Can you do a video doing the same test but with all of them in soft clip mode? Loved the video, cheers
The differences are very subtle -60db in the null test when adjusting by eye. The soft clipping could be identical, but we may never know because of how they parametrize their knobs. Unless I take the time to fit the data to try to pull out the wave shaping functions from each, it will be hard to be definitive, which is why I avoided doing that. But there isn't any magic here, just utility if that helps 🙂
@@RaytownProductions Frankly I didn't want to shell out any money for the plugins to test lmao but I use Gclip in my everyday production uses (which is my job) and the oversampling in the others has me rethinking Gclip. Thank you for the reply!
Thumbs up for this shootout! 👍👍 Those outcomes don't surprise me at all to be honest, there is no magical formula for hard clipping. I think the pronounced nulling difference with g-clip is due to lack of latency compensation on x2 oversamp. Keep in mind thou that hard clipping distortion inherently introduces a lot of harmonics and sum and difference frequencies with complex material. So even with infinite oversampling those spectrograms will show up with a lot of lines.
To totally get rid of the foldback distortion / aliasing you need quite an insane amount of oversampling and a decent nyquist filter. A while back I bought Standard Clip from SIR Audiotools which can go up to 256x oversamp which is ridiculous.
Now all that said, "bad" clippers shouldn't hold you back from creating great music and mixes. I used g-clip a ton of records in the past, for mixing and mastering and I never had any complaints. My personal experience is, everything beyond 4x oversampling is placebo. At least to my ears.
Anyway, great job!
For those interested here is an oversampling analysis: ua-cam.com/video/vFIpdcdbviU/v-deo.html
very very interesting topic, study and experiment ! thanks for the insight and the results ! not really concerned about hype myself but always a good reminder to only trust your ears and sometimes go back to maths and physics ... just to be sure and keep our minds in a scientific approach when confronted to commercial abuses ! love the use of lab coat ... you miss the gloves though mate ! cheers from the valley of fuzz !
BTW discovering your channel, awesome !
My PPE (personal protective equipment) game isn't on point. I should also have some safety glasses 🤓
And thanks so much! So happy you enjoyed the video!
The last versión of Flatline its a jewel with oversampling to x128 its very transparent and the aliasing its gone, now you should make a comparison between StandardCLIP and Flatline at different oversampling, for me they are the best of de market...
Dude! U become my 2nd "audio Hero"! Sorry about that, cause my 1st guy always will be Ethan Winer.
Wow thanks for the kind words! ❤️❤️❤️
This one’s gonna blow up 👀
Amazing content, as always 🙏🏻
haha I hope people learn a lot from it! It was eye opening to me. USE YOUR EARS! 😊
Thanks for saving me about 35 bucks. I know that's not much but, was gonna get the clipper from black salt audio ...but I have a feeling it's more of the same. And I've already got free clip.
Is there any case where the artifacts can be desirable for the sound? In Ermins video where he demo's Flatline he claims he basically never uses oversampling, such as on the new Plini record which is probably the cleanest sounding record I've ever heard, haha!
Yeah it's desirable, because then one can hear a difference, which they can then convince themselves is worth a lot more dollars than zero
In terms of aliasing, which is what oversampling would be reducing, I personally don't think so. It's not harmonically derived so it just adds weird noises all over the place. They are REALLY obvious and harsh sounding when we use a clean signal like in the sine sweep samples so that is what we will also get with complex music. The only difference is it will be masked a lot more and less obvious (but still present).
Now, in more complex material we probably wouldn't be able to HEAR it - especially if the way Ermin uses it is to just shave off a few transient peaks. He's a world class mixing and mastering engineer, so I bet this would be the case - and as a result it is VERY hard to tell it was done.
And if he doesn't use any oversampling, then he should just use one of those other plugins I showed that are free (assuming he uses it as a hard clipper) - but I guess you can take advantage of that instead 😆
Thanks for the good question Mattias! Cheers man.
@@RaytownProductions Thanks for the great response! And I'll definitely check out those free clippers. I own Flatline and I'm super happy with it, but that may mainly be because I have been getting loudness mainly using limiters before. One of the features in Flatline is the ability to set a very flowing transition between soft and hard clipping which I love. I like to have it at around 96% to just let the music breath a little bit more (I work in metal music). Maybe it is there that the difference in the algorithms between the plugins lie (closer to soft clipping).
when implementing my random vibrato plugin, nel-19, which is FREE btw ;), I first had issues with aliasing too, and it sounded really cool on neurobass music, because it's very glitchy anyway and it sorta added up to the aesthetics. aliasing is often stronger in the highend and can make it seem like you get a nice bright sound. but it's usually not desired, because as already mentioned, the harmonics it adds make absolutely no sense harmonically, and if you have a lot of aliasing it also introduces intermodulation, an artefact type that makes everything sound very crunchy. even distorted guitars sound too distorted then
Thx for the video, You could try plugin doctor to plot the antialiasing filter. BR
I have plugin doctor - could you explain more?
I think Dan Worall measured the AA filter on FFP C2 vs reacomp here: m.ua-cam.com/video/FpXqYk1FoWA/v-deo.html
Its also pleasant to listen to, almost like watching a BBC documentary 😁
@@marcusuussalu3016 Dan is the best. Incredible educator and such great videos!
Wow thanx a lot. We have to use any one clipper for lifetime.
I don't agree with your statement at 8 minutes, it's fair in the context of ONLY hard clipping but it doesn't seem clear that you've connected it back to when you said this is a hard clipping test. I've read a lot of comments about this video and there are some
people misunderstanding what you're getting across (seen across FB/YT etc). It is not accurate to the rest of the functionality of each plugin, either free or paid, they sound differen't at different settings correct? Otherwise I found the video to be informative and objective, I just don't know about the title of this video and your statement of: You can buy/get any of them and achieve the same sound. (I have used Flatline and GClip)
I do agree, trust your ears. Thanks for the video. (edit: just noticed an update to the description and timestamps, thanks for clarifying there)
Dude, thank you for this video! I gonna donate Venn Audio for making Free Clip 🙏
I'm sure they would appreciate that! It's solid 🤘
Submission have been very open about the fact that when you said Flatline to 100% it's uses the same code as every other clipper, but that when you start to play with the shape knob is where it gets entirely different. Maybe this video was before the one where they talked about it, but they also don't recommend setting Flatline at 100%
Thanks for the comment Kalen. This video was the first to point this out to my knowledge. What submission audio doesn't want you to know is that hard clippers CAN sound different. In fact, many other clippers I tried didn't make it into this video because they are in fact different than these 4. That is because you can be clever about how the clippers detect the incoming audio. Sure the actual "clipping" *may* be the same process, but so much can change depending on how the signal is detected on the way in. Not too mention the oversampling in the most expensive plugin I tested in this video seem to be unpredictable and possibly implemented incorrectly based on my tests (which I didn't cover in this video). The cleanest was actually Free clip by a landslide (and it's free).
Don't be fooled - be aware of your biases, don't let the cost of a plugin be an indicator of one being better than another. Experiment with your plugins and always use your ear to decide what sounds best for the song - even if it breaks "rules". Cheers!
It just controls the knee size😶
What about new Flatline at 128x oversampling?
There is virtually no benefit going beyond about 32X oversampling assuming you have a correctly implemented oversampling algorithm and anti-aliasing filter. Ermin (the owner of Submission Audio) has said numerous times that he doesn't even use oversampling with Flatline. Maybe this has changed, but I don't think 128X oversampling offers any benefit or enhancement to the quality of the audio. This is based on all the antialiasing tests I've done with various clippers.
You can try the experiment yourself by doing a null test that I show in the video and seeing the level of the residual file. I'm pretty confident that any differences would get lost in noise of the signal.
TL;DR, 128X is all is more about bragging rights and marketing hype than anything else.
Thanks for watching! Cheers.
Really weird, I couldn't get a null on a song. I tried Free Clip, K Clip, G Clip and Boz. The high end always came through
Null tests can be tricky. Make sure you don't have any other plugins in your chain. There might be some sort of uncompensated latency or something happening. I ran into this problem when I had another plugin in the chain that was bypassed. And when it was removed everything worked perfectly.
@@RaytownProductions Nope, just the clippers. I found it also depends on oversampling, I played a bit more and I managed to cancel some of them but with very specific settings
@@Millweed I talk about oversampling and how things change in the second half of the video. Maybe worth checking out to confirm what you've seen.
so which resulted best ??
@@JBprodJosephBae It was just a null test so I wasn't paying much attention. Maybe GClip sounded better, like more transparent but take it with a grain of salt
MATH IS MATH!
Test out UAD plugs as well. Im sure its mostly snake oil.
wow
Nice. I love a bit of science, although I agree with you that the most important thing is to trust your ears. StandardClip by Sir Audio is an excellent clipper by the way. Despite the science negs and positives, my ears were not impressed with Flatline personally. Certainly not worth the money when you have better sounding (to my ears) clippers for way cheaper. Thanks for the video. Oh and on a final note, thank you for talking about the elephant in the room. Oversampling does not always mean it sounds better. Science or no science.
Thanks for watching! I wouldn't have ever known that had I not performed these tests!
Very good video! But asserting that all these plugins have the same algorithm, tested with a sweep frequency, is somewhat hasty, in my opinion. The null test should be done on a final program track. And there listen, or observe the behavior of these plugins. Since it is not the same, for a clipper to act on a complex audio sample, with practically the entire spectrum of audible frequencies happening almost at the same time, as a fixed, sweeping frequency, happening over time. At most this test can show in which isolated areas of the frequency spectrum the plugins show their weaknesses.
I do exactly this in the video. I show it both as sine sweep and on music. The behavior is exactly the same.
Is there an open-source algorithm they're all using?
If I had to guess, everyone is probably using JUCE. It's an SDK for audio processing..
Aliasing artifacts are probably not a big deal if they are only present during drum transients (which I assume is what they are mostly going to be reacting to in actual use of clipping plug-ins). Drum transients are so short and non-tonal the aliased frequencies produced will probably be perceived as extremely short bursts of additional non-tonal noise, and not sound anything like the artifacts present in an aliased sine sweep.
Great comment! You are definitely on to something here. I completely agree with you when it comes to drum transients as those are fundamentally different from a sine sweep. This is one reason why clippers are so powerful when it comes to maintaining punch with rock and metal and lets us get more aggressive with loudness. However, it does tend to make the sonic width of a track collapse a bit and sound harsh, so we will still want to minimize these aliasing artifacts as much as possible. And like the video shows with scientific evidence, my weapon of choice is Freeclip.
Thanks for watching. Cheers!
Noticeable distortion and aliasing problems from heavy-handed compression and brickwall *limiting* tends to be a lot more prevalent in most genres, but metal is _always distorted_ and so limiter abuse isn't so obvious unless it's been woefully over-applied.
People that use clippers for mixing duty tend to know why to use one, and at what point in the signal chain.
Compression (and to some degree limiting) comes after EQ and reverb in the learning-curve, and ALSO takes considerably more knowledge to learn all about than clipping does, too - and so it gets (ab))used on the reg by every bedroom rando and pros alike.
In fact one MUST take the time to abuse a compressor thoroughly to begin to understand how they like to behave (!)...but for love of god take the time to do it on test material, dont abuse it on session time.
Freeclip has a new paid version called V.Clip wkth 256x over sampling! Please compare the two plugins! Im guessing V.Clip must be much better?!
I doubt it will be much better. 256x oversampling is probably overkill in my opinion. I think the 32x is plenty for everything I do. But I'll see what I can do! Thanks for watching and the suggestion 🙂
@@RaytownProductions Well in my experiment it sounds much better. Would love too see your scientific analysis!
@@jundubstudios Definitely! Thanks for letting me know 🙂
At 22:35 you incorrectly read the chart, claiming that brighter red lines are louder than darker red lines. The main sweep line will obviously be the loudest, and on all charts it appears as being the darkest red. Darker red is louder.
Tbh i prefer to just use the pro l 2. Theres a pretty cool trick you can do to make it a clipper and tbh it sounds almost the same so yeah
how does the trick goes?
@@jdimeleegoku2971 you set the attack time( which is the attack for the release btw) to max and the release time to 0ms. This way you are bassically removing the limiter stage. Also 0 - 1 ms of lookahead. The shorter rhe lookahead rhe more it clips. I prefer to use the modern style but tbh all styles sound good.
@@unrue1048 Ohh I will try this. Thanks for sharing!
Where can I get that pin tho…..
So I was watching this and thought, well if you think they use the exact same alorithms by testing 1 of their 100 different settings, you are kind of missing the point. Hard clipping, is basically hard clipping no matter what, as the video showed.
Taken from the Submission Audio group, here is what Ermin said:
«Firstly, I'm very happy to hear that the plugin is working exactly as intended. The foreshadowing of the conclusion comes at 1:30, when the viewer is informed that it's a 'hard-clipping test'.
Luckily for any audio engineer, they already know that bit-for-bit, hard clipping between tools (assuming they're coded correctly) is identical. It's in the name - hard clipping is always the same thing. It was 30 years ago, as it is today.
An analogue to this test would be running a collection of minimum phase digital EQs, matching for gain and Q levels, then resultingly being astounded that they null perfectly. If you're looking for a pre-determined conclusion, odds are you're going to find it.
So, why Flatline? Well, you'll likely have noticed that in none of the tests or promotional material do we use, or intend to keep its use at 100% 'shape' (hard clipping setting). That would largely defeat the point, although hard clipping has been known to see use in professional mastering applications under various circumstances as well - hence why we offered the user the option to reach that sound.
You'll have noticed that on some of the larger prog records of the year, I used it with the waveshaping function closer to 90% or 95%. Using oversampling further delineates the plugin from textbook 'hard clipping'.
None of this is news to anybody with a rudimentary understanding of audio engineering, and certainly not to any coders. We fully expected that people would work out, and understand that Flatline at its default startup state gives you the sound of hard clipping. It was entirely intentional. In that way the user could work backward and tailor the clipping to their own use purposes.
Our approach regarding branding came from our beta test program, where we had a collection of well-established professional engineers putting Flatline through the ringer. One of them - a mastering mentor of mine, said that after repeated tests, he found he preferred it to the sound of clipping his (very well renowned) $10k mastering grade converters. This is, of course, assuming one is using it correctly.
So, with that in mind, when you come across an entity or individual with a vested interest in uncovering something for the purposes of sellacious content pushes or self aggrandization, this tends to be the result. We encourage people to be better than that.»
So yeah. 🤷♂️
Thanks for the comment. I agree, all the devs in the video do use the same algo for hard clipping which I pointed out with evidence.
The slope setting on some of the plugins I show in this video make it very difficult to compare the plugins because of how the sliders and knobs are parameterized and their resolution. So, "1 notch" on Plugin A may NEVER equal "1 notch" on Plugin B. I could try to adjust the slopes while listening for a perfect null, but that wasn't the point of the video.
The point I'm trying to make in the video is to remind people about the power of bias and the need for proper testing and blind listening to objectively determine which plugins and settings are best for our music.
The other thing I can try is to look at the dynamic response using plugin doctor - which I have done. The knee is very similar to the others. I can't tell you if it's the exact same though. AFAIK, the only way to know for sure is to compare the waveshaping functions, but those are proprietary to the companies. There may be subtle differences between them, or none at all.
Other plugins I mentioned that are "hard clippers" didn't null so I didn't include them. Maybe those other companies "messed something up" or maybe its part of their "magic."
Its cool to see that flatline was beta tested by lots of people - but they are still people and susceptible to bias. Some may have gone through great lengths to shoot this plugin out, but without any evidence I have a hard time just accepting someone's opinion.
This video came from an honest clipper comparison I did for a project I was working on. Just to be clear, I have absolutely no ill will towards Ermin or any of these companies. They make products I use everyday. I don't want people to stop buying or using these products. If you get away from hard clipping there are subtle differences that may make one sound or feel better - but be sure to do the blind test!
Thanks for the comment and good discussion!
@@RaytownProductions I get what you mean, but you are kind of insinuating to people who might not know that much about how clippers work that a 120$ clipper has the same qualities as the free ones. Which obviously is not true. You fear that people are going to be biased about the hype, I fear that people are going to be biased by a misleading video doing tests that have nothing to do with the actual performance of the products. You can already see in the comments people thinking they have been scammed for buying FLATLINE beacuse of this video. Why do you at 8 or so minutes says that the clippers are all functionally identical and you can buy any of them for the same sound, if it was your contention to be fair to the product?
@@SimenSandnes Well said, this is what I was thinking too. Unfortunately theres no easy way to "prove" one plugin is just definitively better than the others like he tried to do in this video, because they are all going to do things slightly differently, and hopefully we can discern for ourselves whether those differences net a positive change or a negative one. But yes, the video is misleading.
Yeah this watches like he’s out to prove Ermin is scamming people rather than an “unbiased” comparison. He’s preying on the uninformed. Who has this guy mastered exactly?
@@SimenSandnes if the $120 clipper and the free clipper both have an adjustable knee, how is the $120 clipper any better? I'd be curious to see if someone could pick out Flatline in a blind test. Maybe there's something I still need to learn about Clippers, but Ermin's written rebuttal basically didn't refute the point at all.
Was there someone who thought there were different hard clipping algorithms? It wouldn't really be hard clipping if it is not exactly what you expect, now would it?
I would have liked to see flatline at 32 oversampling. It's not exactly the same thing when you are doing the free at 32 and flatline only at 8.
At higher oversample rates in flatline, the response was inconsistent. I think this was a bug which I'm not sure the company fixed or not. So I didn't go above 8x oversampling because it wasn't a fair comparison. Hopefully they fixed the issue.
I’ve tried everything to get it to work on my Mac . It just won’t instal without crashing . Argh! Thanks for your content though. Good stuff
Sorry to hear that :( Glad you at least got something from the video :)
@@RaytownProductions I ended up buying V-Clip.
So does this basically means the majority of fx plugins are pretty much the same.
Maybe not exactly the same but definitely similar 🙂
Here’s the secret and the sauce
💪🏽💪🏽
Miss you homie!
Wowwwwwww 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Aye, hard clipping is, like, one algorithm and 32x oversampling is more oversampling than 4x. You don't say, mate.
What about soft clipping tho? That's where all the nitty-gritty usually lies.
TBH 4x oversampling without any numerical integration is kinda weak for a mastering clipper. Also they could've switch up the Pro-L UI just a little bit too. I don't know, move the metering to the left, actually draw the transfer curve, that kind of stuff. And showing the knee softness in dB/oct instead of, uh, percentage, would've been nice too. It seems that clipper is not all that well thought out.
But at least offloading the computing to GPU is kinda nice, if you're not a Mac user.
Frequency sweeps made the dogs outside bark. Sorry neighbors! LOL
Sorry about that haha!
I agree, my snares sound like shit
this is hilarious =D=D=D=D
Tinnitus warning @ 3:13 !!!
The fact that Flatline cost $130 and only goes up to x4 oversampling is mind boggling! SandardClip reigns supreme!
Marketing hype 🙂 I'll have to shoot out standard clip. Heard incredible things
@@RaytownProductions waiting for this !
Melda Plugins oversample up to x1024 that's alot of math!!
i respect your work, but i really dont understand how you didnt put the 2 most used clippers in the game on your list. kclip and standardclip.
Those don't null with these. They are implemented differently. To keep the video more focused, I went with these ones. Thanks for the question!
Well, hard clipping is hard clipping... Whatever plugin you use, if it's coded properly, you WILL get the EXACT same results since there's only one sort of hard clipping. What you missed with Flatline, is that Ermin does NOT use it 100% as a hard clipper, but around 95%. And this is where you have all the differences!
Hard clipping is hard clipping, but DETECTION is and CAN be different. This is why not ALL hard clippers are the same nor sound the same even with the same "hard clipping algorithm". There are plugin and DSP experts that are actually innovating and there are marketing experts. Up to us to do the due diligence 🙂
that being said, if you really want to meter them loudness, save that $130 for Metering plugins instead, and you'll probably be left with some bucks left