The Song Fight Bulletin Board

If it's just transients, I'll take the clipping, thanks. In any other case I'll probably turn down the level globally, or get rid of some tracks in that bit. Or fiddle in the mix, but it's not that often that I have accidental dynamics that are bad enough to break the mix like that.

If your clipping doesn't sound like a horrible pop where everything gets square-wave distorted, then your DAW is already putting a limiter to roll the peaks off anyway.

Yes, I know the difference. No, my DAW doesn't roll off anything.

I guess it's just a personal preference, then. I hate the sound of clipping way more than I hate the sound of a transient getting slightly muffled.

I just noticed that Ian Shepherd (whose work we've talked about before in this subforum) made a plugin for helping you determine where the "loudness" in your mix is coming from, whether it's resulting in digital distortion, and where you have room to improve it.

http://productionadvice.co.uk/perception/

It normally goes for $149, but he's got it on sale today and tomorrow for $99. I admit, even at the sale price that's a bit steep for a plugin. But I don't know of anything else on the market that fills this particular niche, and it might be worth checking out if you have a little disposable income and a strong motivation to improve your mixes.

I do like and trust Ian for his mastering skills. I've watched a lot of his videos and he's big on the loudness war. He even took the time once to critique one of my mastered mixes when I was headstrong on learning the tricks of the trade, even though I've never paid for his mastering classes. That was really nice of him. Of course the first thing he said was that it would be a great song if it wasn't clipping, lol.

As for his plug-in, if he wants me to try it, he'll have to offer a demo version first. I'll need to see that it's a time saver in my workflow. Mainly because I already have a method I've gotten comfortable with. Again, using a major label reference song. Basically, when I can match the loudness level of a reference track and still maintain my snare hits and kick thumps and not muddying up the mid/lows with some creative use my EQ, AND it sounds clear and awesome to my ears, bingo.

That does seem neat, but even $100 seems like rather a lot for that. It makes me want to get around to learning how to write AudioUnits because the actual functionality it provides doesn't seem all that complicated (especially if you ignore the latency compensation stuff).

Also, I notice that it only works on fully-mixed tracks, so that wouldn't really help with the individual track EQ, which is what I seem to always have trouble with.

Yeah, Ian is a mastering engineer. His videos are always dealing with mixed stereo files that he is putting the final polish on for their intended use. Unless he is showing how problems occur in the mix, he might show individual tracks. But mostly it's mastering techniques.
One thing about his videos is that he's careful not to let too much info out on the free vids. He really wants you to pay for his classes.

Very interesting stuff. Thinking about getting this plugin and taking his classes. !