Soft Clipper vs. Compression?

[NinjaBeats]

Hi guys, so Im pretty new to this and realizing that mixing can make or break a track. So Ive been researching the best way to do this. So for example, Ive got a piano melody that just sounds too high at certain peaks when its loud, likewise with the snare.

One method someone told me was to use a noise gate on my snare to get rid of certain frequencies. Also Ive seen videos of compression. Then Ive seen people using the Soft Clipper tool. More or less all of this is compression right ? Is there a right way to do this or just experiment with all? Thanks.

 

[steffeeh]

A noise gate can't get rid of certain frequencies. What a gate does is that it mutes the volume of a sound whenever it goes below a chosen level, and it's a great tool to remove unwanted noises, like microphone noise between vocals or an unnecessary woofy kick tail, but it can't eliminate certain frequencies.
If you want to eliminate a certain frequency, use an EQ instead and use a very narrow bandwidth/Q-value and subtract only that frequency.

Compression and gating are two different things, as a compressor reduces the volume of a sound whenever the signal exceeds a certain chosen level with a desired amount, therefore lowering the difference between the highest volume and the lowest volume in a sound.

Do you mean the Soft Clipper tool on FL? That plugin is a soft-knee limiter.
A limiter is a compressor that never let the signal go above a certain level (while a compressor subtract the volume with a desired amount).
Soft knee means it's slowly increasing the volume reduction as the signal gets closer to the chosen level, while hard-knee goes with full force as soon as the signal has exceeded the chosen level.

Though "soft clipping" doesn't have anything to do with that plugin (it's a strange name on that plugin IMO). Soft clipping is a kind of smooth distortion.

If you have a piano or snare that's too loud at some points, use a compressor and set the threshold (the level where it starts to act) to where the volume starts sounding too loud and apply Ratio (amount of volume reduction) until it sounds right. Then play with the Attack time and the Release time of the compression to get the transients and fatness right.

 

[bandcoach]

steefeh, you are being too literal - using a noise gate in conjunction with a pre-filter (bandpass) will achieve the desired result - the filter knocks out the problem freqs and keeps the initial slope of the band reject points of the filter quiet as well