Letting Kick-Drums Clip

[Majestic Mastermind]

does anyone let their drums actually clip intentionally?

I have to say when i do this, the drums hit hard and yet still are loud and sit in the mix correctly.

When I try to Eq, Compress and limit, it only makes it worse.

 

[noblewordz]

No. I think if you need to clip your drums something is wrong. Either your monitors or your drum samples. But if you think it sounds good then keep doing it.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

If your kick drum is clipping the channel or main buss, there's probably other stuff clipping?

 

[chris carter]

Well, kicks (or any other instrument) should not be clipping in the actual track. In other words, the channel should not be clipping. In general you should be tracking instruments so they peak around -18 to -12dBFS... that's VERY far away from clipping.

That said, as a process, yes, I sometimes will clip kicks for a certain sound. How I do this depends on whether I'm producing or mixing.

Sometimes slightly clipping a kick (especially 909s) sounds really great on my Akai S2800. So if I'm actually making the beat, I might try that.

At mixdown, I take a different approach when I want to clip a kick obviously. I will generally run it OTB and into a piece of gear and clip it there (perhaps a channel on a mixer, or with a preamp) and then pad it back down. It's important to maintain proper gain structure, even if you intentionally clip something.

It's ironic this thread came up. It's not THAT often that I intentionally clip a kick drum. But today I actually had to do just that on a record I was mixing for someone. I tried a few different OTB things, but it turned out that just a really poorly set up distortion plug in (set up essentially to clip rather than provide smooth distortion) did the trick. Ya gotta be flexible sometimes... LOL

 

[ACRANIM]

epik said he lets his kicks clip a little

and if u dont know who that is
soundclick . com/player/single_player.cfm?songID=9127895&q=hi&autoplay=0&newref=2

take out the spaces

 

[Obitheincredible]

Yeah I never clip anything. If I want distortion or saturation I use the proper plugs.

 

[Kno1ills]

I do it in my 60 or s900, but once its in my DAW, nope.

 

[Astar]

I was watching this one tutorial and this guy was saying you can clip any channel as long as the master output isn't clipping.

 

[K¥O Beatz]

wth clipping is always bad & i agree with obith

of course there are those times that a certain channel clips in some parts of the song which sucks but usually lower it down a bit and your good to go

CLIPPING IS ALWAYS BAD

 

[anomalouscode]

we should do a "clipping is great when,...." thread

while clipping is bad, like carter said sometimes it gets you the sound you're looking for.

as Obi mentioned, if i want distortion of any kind i normally load up a plug or send it out to something.

having said that,... i did get a nice sound on a bass when i accidentally loaded a limiter.

it farted in a way that no distortion unit could, and for that particular track i was making it sounded bad@ss

 

[Xabiton]

if it sounds best letting it distort for demo purposes may work but never for stems or actual releases Ive found that i get the sound i want without having to clip the kicks though.