Stereo Tool

Hello,
Would it be possible to insert a switch in the BS.412 limiter to decide wether the Gain reduction is done before or behind the final clipping stages?
The reason: The advantage of reducing the gain prior the clipping stages (and therefore controlling its drive) is to hold up the peak deviation to the max. or defined level.
But because of the bis influence of the clipping drive for the sound, it may sound more consistent if you reduce the level behind the clipper stages (the input amplification must be deactivated in this case)
So you can adjust the clipper drive (like all the other clipping parameters) according to your desired sound and the clip drive is always the same.
And then i think the gain reduction is more effective because the peak level stays constant at most time when reducing before the clipper and when doing after this the reduction occures to the whole output level.

You're the 2nd person who asked this this week! I'm not too sure that this will really have a lot of effect. In the end the only thing that changes is that the clipping level is reduced a bit. The amount of reduction will be nearly equal. The reduced clipping level has almost no effect on the BS412 level (I tried that before).

In good presets that send a very constant signal to the BS412 limiter, the effect (reduction) of the BS412 limiter is almost always less than 1 dB, with peaks upto 2 dB in extreme cases (for example if you allow more bass to get through). So, you can mimic the effect in the current version by manually following the amount of reduction in the clipping level - 1 dB of reduction is appox. 10% clipping level reduction (so from 75 to 67.5 kHz for 1 dB reduction. 60 kHz for 2 dB). I've just tested it and I can't say that I hear any difference (peaks to 75 kHz are rare anyway) - but please try it yourself and let me know the results. I have also measured the impact on the audio level and even if I lower the clipping to 37.5 kHz I only measure about 0.5 dB in BS412 output level difference if there's no reduction taking place - and I definitely prefer the sound at 75 kHz.