Little Clipper includes just the essential features you need, along with input and threshold metering, to quickly and easily dial in the perfect amount of clipping to enhance individual tracks, stereo busses, or entire mixes.

Just like the constellations for which they were named, Little Clipper is a smaller but no less capable version of the Big Clipper. Both provide a path to the sonic benefits of clipping combined with limiting, but the Little Clipper offers a simpler, more direct route in applications where you don't require the shaping, blending, and frequency sensitivity controls of the Big Clipper. Little Clipper combines a variable clipping algorithm with clipping into three simple controls. The two main buttons, Push (clipping) and Pull (limiting), control the intensity of the clipping and the amount of limiting. A slider below the Pull button lets you control the shape of the clipping from soft to hard, depending on how subtle or aggressive you want the clipping to be. Between the buttons are meters that show the input level and the threshold, above which clipping occurs. Little Clipper has a toolbar that provides presets, A/B banks for comparison, a blend knob, bypass and, most significantly, a selector that lets you choose between stereo, mid + side, mid only and side only processing. Once you experience how easy it is to balance instruments and vocals in a mix with Little Clipper, you'll feel like you're cheating.

Just the facts

• Hard/Soft Clipping
• Intuitive input gain and ceiling controls
• Mix knob to mix your dry sound back in
• Multiple stereo configurations for stereo bus clipping
• Little Clipper - cracking the code

Wait, what? Benefits of Sonic Clipping? Shouldn't we avoid cutting?

We've all been there: you've got your mix sounding the way you want it to; Drums are loud and prominent, your snare has punch and punch, but then you look at the track's overload meters in the red and think you need to lower the levels to avoid all the clipping (which you didn't hear). Then you start pulling down the faders and suddenly your snare turns into a rumble, your entire mix, once awake and exciting, is now a snooze fest. You've just experienced the benefits of clipping.

Clipping is the analogue of tube distortion with overdrive and tape saturation (see what we did there?), both of which were intended to be avoided, but golden-eared engineers discovered that distortion, while counterintuitive, provided a means of highlighting instruments and vocals in a mix with clarity. The distortion itself wasn't heard unless you pushed it really hard. Currently, there is no shortage of analog distortion generators in both hardware and modeling software.

As we said, clipping is the analogous form of distortion in digital systems. Analog distortion mainly took the form of soft clipping and saturation, which smoothed transients and added rich harmonics. Digital cropping does the same thing, but with a narrower window between nice and unusable. It's easy to overdo digital cropping, but when applied judiciously, it can make mixing easier. Elements in a mix fit together more easily, while dynamics are more controlled and transparent. This is due to the attenuated transients preventing compressors from punching holes in your mix (everything under a transient is pushed down by the compressor). Digital clipping can bring cohesion or glue to the mix, and when combined with limitation, it can help you emerge victorious from the volume wars - victory is yours.

Little Clipper Controls

Little Clipper has the essential features needed to quickly and easily dial in the perfect amount of clipping. “Push” controls the input gain of the clipping algorithm. The harder you drive the input, the harder the clipping will be. The “Pull” button adjusts the cutting limit. Anything above the threshold is cut, anything below is untouched. A Hard/Soft slider lets you shape the clipping from soft and mellow to bright with bite. Between the Push and Pull buttons are meters that show the input level and threshold. Levels are displayed in blue, while the clipping amount is shown above the input level in red.

Stereo or Mid/Side

Little Clipper allows you to choose the channel configuration for stereo tracks. Cutting generally sounds much more natural in Mid/Side mode on stereo buses. It even allows you to cut just the middle, which is good for mono tracks like bass, kick, and snare), or just side channels, giving you even more control over the cut.

Forms

As with all effects, cutting is bad when you do it randomly. When used with purposeful intent, it is a very powerful tool that can increase apparent dynamics while keeping peaks in check. It's especially powerful on drums. Just a little trimming before a compressor in a box will give your compressor a much more natural sound and predictable results. Or let's say you have a snare performance with ghost notes that you'd like to bring in for groove purposes. You could use a multiband expander, but you run the risk of emphasizing “singing” tones (tones playing in sympathy with the kit). Little Clipper, on the other hand, will bring up the ghost notes without the tone song. And speaking of tones, nothing gives more attitude without amplitude than a Little Clipper. Just add a push and the tones will appear. Use it in a drum sub-mix in MS mode and hear the drums take on a three-dimensional quality thanks to its ambient-enhancing effects.