CLIPPERS
Give your signals the buzzcut with this handful of distorting, maximizing, brickwall processors that go from soft to hard
LVC-Audio Clipped-MAX $50
The actual clipping operation in Clipped-MAX can vary each time you see it. The plugin has four modules that can run at once. The main ‘clipper clipper’ is on the master page, offering the confusingly named ‘makeup’ parameter to get things working and the margin control as a soft/hard ‘ratio’. The ‘Shifter’ page leaves the clipping threshold dynamic, reacting to the volume of the input at any time to give a consistent impact on dynamic range. In multiband operation mode, you set Clipped-MAX up as a six-band (or fewer) processor, giving you the power of single-band operation but tailored differently across the frequency spectrum. There’s a stereo mode that offers separate clipping over mid and side signals. While four modes could be excessive, Clipped-MAX gives you real options. Easy to use and brings balance between control and distortion.