How Skrillex Uses Limiters and Clippers for Maximum Loudness

This video explains how to use limiters and clippers together to achieve loud masters. However, it's crucial to understand that true loudness is achieved during the mixing stage, not in mastering.

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⌚️ TIMESTAMPS
Introduction: 00:00
What Are Limiters?: 0:43
What Are Clippers?: 1:44
Tips For Using Clippers: 2:28
Using a Clipper and Limiter Together: 3:58

[BeatsbyVanity]

What’s your biggest challenge when trying to achieve loud masters from your mixes? For me, it’s remembering to build loudness into the mix itself, rather than relying too much on the master bus.

[maomao]

An important tip is to control the peaks with clippers and limiters at the track level first, then the group and master level. If you leave everything up to the master clipper/limiter, you will more than likely introduce unpleasant intermodulation to the track. Ideally you want the group and master level clipper/limiter to do as little work as possible, while majority of the work is handled by the track level clipper/limiter.

[HexxedOfficial]

Superb video! Well put and edited, thorough explanations which were easy to grasp. Thank you!

[Nightizm]

I discovered this 10 years ago accidentally with Fruity Soft Clipper and FL Limiter. It's so satisfying to finally get a breakdown of what I was doing so often but didn't quite understand.

Ty 🖤

[KindridMusic]

Quick and small thing but as far as soft/hard clipping goes, the difference is the "knee" of the wave shaper being used to clip the signal, similar to a compressor. Different clippers present this differently, and most don't give you number values, but effectively a hard clip is a knee of 0, meaning the signal before the threshold is not affected at all. And with "soft" clippers, you usually find a knee of between 3 and 6db, meaning that 3-6db before the threshold the signal is progressively more clipped, as to make the signal sound more transparent because it is less "squared-off" at the top. My favorite example of where this is displayed in number values is the clipper in TDR Limiter 6 GE.

Good video, though. Didn't know K-Clip had a free version now. I will definitely recommend that to people. And also that oscilloscope.

[LesterWayneDobos]

Thanks for providing info on free clipper

[elguaripolo]

Straight to the point, excelent explanation/examples, and hella funny. thank you a lot!

[ericcaomusic]

AMAZING VIDEO!!! THE INFORMATION WAS SO CLEAR AND PRECISE!!! ALSO YOU HAVE A GREAT VOICE!!! :D

[divanadj]

Straight to the point, thank you. Very informative and helpful. Subscribed

[莎拉]

In addition to what has already been mentioned, you have to consider the leveling processing of channels and effects, the process of maintaining the amplitude of the master channel to receive the augmentation processing.

[J-DUB-F]

Good context here 👍.
I'm finishing up an ep for a band right now. I wanted to see how far I could push track density and the crest factor, without any limiting. Throughout the session I've got small instances of comp and clipping...this is on individual tracks and group busses.(very small increments). Then on the mix buss there's just a little compression and saturation. I'm hitting anywhere from -11 to -9 lufs(integrated). This may be pushing it too far, but when it gets to the mastering stage it really won't need aggressive limiting.

[morsymusic]

Great advice on the Limiter "release" section, I always wondered if too short was a bad idea....Also, not sure if you mentioned this in the video but a pro tip is to gain stage ALL your stem files to hit -6 or even -12. This way you have more headroom to push the limiter or compressor even more and get way less distortion (unless thats the sound you're going for, which can be cool too!)

[hRMzMusic]

Do you have any Gain Staging recommendations. I fall under the "to many limiter" category. I limit all my busses and my kicks and snares and my master and my mid basses and my sidechain and what not to not go over 0db but I just learned about "gain staging" and how it helps prevent all this entirely but just trying to see how Dubstep producers use this technique.

[user]

I remember Optical of Ed Rush & Optical explaining how they used to chop off the spikes of a waveform to make the track louder. Basically manually clipping.

[crowkangi]

great info. play at 7.5 speed playback.

[zeropointdub]

For me the mixing stage is just getting the loudness of each sound correct in relationship to the other sounds in the mix not the overall loudness. I'll use my mastering chain to get the overall loudness of the track up without distorting any of the sounds. I run all my drums and sub through a clipper before the master and all my "drop" sounds through a limiter before the master and a clipper on the beginning of my mastering chain and it keeps everything from flooding the master chain

[arellano]

Genius Explanation saving so much time understanding loudness, just in 6 minutes.. thank you

[Bthelick]

Warning: Here's the facts of digital audio if you clip a sound at 0, and add it to another sound also clipped at 0, you get +6.
This is why "clip to zero" can never work at the track / buss level. It's actually better sounding and louder to just clip the master buss only without limiting or compression at all.
(If the transients are handled well as the video says)
I've released completely unmastered tracks professionally like this for nearly a decade.

[xcentricmusic]

This is very very good information to have put out there. whoa!

[rellicasrevenge]

It's interesting that this technique has been lowkey gatekept for a very long time. most new producers never get a change to get this info until so far into their journey! Nice vid