Kazrog’s KClip 3 is an intelligently designed audio clipper and a multi-band track saturator that has unique features to implement just the right amount of this modern process to suit your musical taste and genre.
I have to admit this is an all-new process for me while mixing music, but I am impressed using KClip 3 to not only get the “cleanest loud” possible because of digital oversampling but also as a special effect and analog color maker with lots of presets.
Unlike most clippers, KClip 3 has eight, “soft” clipping modes that are described in the manual by way of comparing their generated sound to actual analog circuits. There is a four-band clipper with adjustable crossovers between bands for clipping/saturating more, less, or not at all in certain frequency bands.
In Pro Tools, I mix music to 16 analog stereo summing stems that can be recorded as individual stereo .wav files within the DAW. Stem mixing allows full, “post mix” control—a way to rebalance/change significantly and quickly for the different (future and unknown) uses for my music mixes. Vocal-up, track-only, vocal-down versions, immersive remixes (using these stems) are all easy to realize after using stemmed mixes.
I use KClip 3 on some of these individual stems and I’m having very good results getting those stems loud with minimal distortion. I’m still adjusting to this new (to me) methodology but so far, I’m finding KClip 3 indispensable on drum kits stemmed out to three stereo pairs to control the peak levels of attacks, yet not dull them like when using a compressor or limiter. On the electric guitar stem, I’m finding some of the mode presets great to get certain distortion characteristic to work great!
I can highly recommend KClip 3 for mixing for its superior, detailed and refined approach that makes one of the oldest, heretofore ‘taboos’ in audio reproduction and mixing so very useful. There is a learning curve but you can store your own version(s) starting with the initial preset.
It sells for $69 MSRP.
