I am a minimalist at heart. I want processors that are simple, direct, and powerful. As engineers, we can quickly overcomplicate things.
I recently spoke to Mike Indovina of the Master Your Mix Podcast about how you can use clipping to your advantage.
A while back, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the legendary author Bobby Owsinski on his podcast,
Back in March of 2024, I did an interview with Devvon Terrell, L.Dre, and Courtney Taylor of the Help Me Devvon / Audio Nerds podcast…
Mixing and mastering records for a living means that you will be working long hours, and those hours often bleed into your personal life…
You never know whether a record you are working on is going to be a hit or not. I have tried to predict it and sometimes I was right, but most of the time…
One year later, Reflecting on my Grammy Nomination for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
We have exciting news for GOLD CLIP users!
To show our appreciation for your support, we're upgrading all Gold Clip users to the new GOLD CLIP PACK!
Gold Clip Pack includes the original Gold Clip that you know and love, plus the FREE add-on plugin, GOLD CLIP track.
We’ve got some exciting news to share... We’ve gone through the entire codebase for both the Mac and Windows versions of Gold Clip, hunting for every possible efficiency. We analyzed every element and made improvements to enhance stability and performance—and the results are exceptional!
Alchemy is a high-frequency dynamic processor intended to soften the harshness that clipping can cause. We designed Alchemy when we originally built Gold Clip, and it sounds excellent, but the mastering engineer in me believes that everything in audio can be improved. So, we made Alchemy 2.
A few weeks back, my friend Ken Lewis asked me to make a video about how I use Gold Clip and Orange Clip for his Mixing Night Podcast. I decided to throw that video on my YouTube page and share it with you.
We have been working very hard to make major upgrades to both Orange Clip & Gold Clip. Log in to your Schwabe Digital account and download your free Orange Clip update today!
Below are some legendary engineers that are making music with a little help from Gold Clip. Read how they are using it and take a listen.
From launch to legend, GOLD CLIP has come a long way in one year. Several months before the release, I started an Instagram to talk my way through the making of Gold Clip.
ORANGE CLIP is inspired by the unique stock clipper found in one of the most legendary digital audio workstations for modern music production. The clipper itself is simple, but it has a bold and unique sound that you have heard in many modern productions.
ORANGE CLIP is a simple tool that might not even need a manual. There is essentially one knob that affects the sound, ORANGE. And it is right there in the center of the plugin.
In the last post I spoke a bit about why I built ORANGE CLIP, its sound, and some basics about its functionality.
In the last post we spoke a little about how transfer functions and wave shapers work. Today we will dig in a little deeper into how wave shapers like ORANGE CLIP work.
The ORANGE setting determines the size and shape of the wave shaping applied to the track. You can consider it a threshold on a compressor. It is the level at which the signal starts to wave shape or compress.
The ceiling control floats over the input meter, allowing you to clip extremely low-level signals without changing the input trims.
In the last email we talked about some metering and user controls of ORANGE CLIP. Today we will discuss the power of the the true parallel mixer.
Today we will dig into the basics behind the oversampling in ORANGE CLIP. We spent months getting the wave shaping in ORANGE CLIP just right, and then added all of the oversampling functionality of GOLD CLIP.
We spent an endless amount of time trying to determine the exact mathematical equation that makes ORANGE CLIP sound so good, and that equation matches its inspiration in every detail: dynamically, harmonically, and sonically.
Today marks the 6-month anniversary for the release of GOLD CLIP. I want to take this time to thank you all for the support and love you have shown.
We have an updated interface, new oversampling options, a new downsampling filter technique, and some long-requested new features.
Don't be intimidated. While the internal gain staging of GOLD CLIP is complex, the functionality on the interface is very simple. Once you understand it, you'll be ready to use the plugin in any scenario.
This is a simple, straightforward way to use GOLD CLIP for mixing and mastering in any genre.
This is a simple, straightforward way to use GOLD CLIP for mixing and mastering in any genre.
The namesake of GOLD CLIP, this feature is fundamentally different than a traditional compressor. Instead of an attack and release time, Gold performs a sample-by-sample analysis of the input and applies a non-linear gain to the signal.
In medieval times, people believed in "alchemy": a fictional process that could supposedly transform mundane materials into precious gold. Sadly, it doesn't exist...
But in GOLD CLIP, it does :)
You probably already have seen that GOLD CLIP has three unique clipper algorithms: Modern, Classic, and Hard.
Clip Clock is very simple idea, but a powerful tool that is unique to Gold Clip. It does two things.
Box Tone is one of the more subtle processors on GOLD CLIP, but I often find it helpful when I want to smooth out the top end of digital recordings. In effect, Box Tone is a hyper-sonic low-pass filter that cleans up some of the digital ugliness on the very top of a mix.
In my mixing I use a lot of parallel processing. Parallel compression, distortion, modulation, and obviously time-based effects. The benefit of using parallel processing is …
Did you know that GOLD CLIP's meters and waveform display scaling can be magnified?
The default scaling is +6 dBFS -> -36 dBFS, but if you double-click the scale …
Oversampling is a passionate subject for a lot of people, but I believe many spend far too much time thinking about it.
You have heard me say this before, but as engineers, we tend to overcomplicate things. Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest solution is always the most effective.