# STEM Delivery and Clipping



## BenG (Mar 17, 2019)

Quick mixing question!

I'm delivering a couple f track for a publisher on an upcoming album, which will have the STEMS professionally mastered. The last section has a bit of clipping on downbeats due to all of the orchestra/percussion/sound design. 

Is this okay or should there be no clipping whatsoever?(There is a decent amount of headroom for the rest of the track)


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## jmars (Mar 17, 2019)

You don’t want any if your stems to be clipping. There’s nothing a mastering engineer can do to fix that.

If you are happy with the overall balance of your current mix, just gain everything down by an equal ammount until you aren’t clipping, then reprint your stems


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## BenG (Mar 17, 2019)

Ah, good to know! The stems themselves aren't clipping, just the full mix, so I'll bring it down!


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 17, 2019)

Most people will just limit the full mix so it doesn't clip. Yes, that means that the stems will technically sound different and if you play them, they'll clip the full mix but most people are fine with that since if someone is ever using the stems, they'll be making changes to the levels anyways.

Limiting the stems to -2dBFS will usually be OK but I've clipped mixes with that regardless and at a certain point you're bringing down the level of everything so much so that it doesn't clip when it sums that it becomes ridiculous.

The correct solution is to sidechain limit the stem with the full mix but that full mix has to be without the limiting so it gets complicated to set it up properly. You basically need to create separate stem busses for the limiter. You create a send from your normal stem busses to a full mix buss then you sidechain the stem limiters with that.


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## Desire Inspires (Mar 17, 2019)

Clipping is cool. A bit of "imperfection" makes it sound more realistic and less mechanical.


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## BenG (Mar 17, 2019)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Most people will just limit the full mix so it doesn't clip. Yes, that means that the stems will technically sound different and if you play them, they'll clip the full mix but most people are fine with that since if someone is ever using the stems, they'll be making changes to the levels anyways.
> 
> Limiting the stems to -2dBFS will usually be OK but I've clipped mixes with that regardless and at a certain point you're bringing down the level of everything so much so that it doesn't clip when it sums that it becomes ridiculous.
> 
> The correct solution is to sidechain limit the stem with the full mix but that full mix has to be without the limiting so it gets complicated to set it up properly. You basically need to create separate stem busses for the limiter. You create a send from your normal stem busses to a full mix buss then you sidechain the stem limiters with that.



Would I be handling the side chain or would that be the mastering engineer?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 17, 2019)

BenG said:


> Would I be handling the side chain or would that be the mastering engineer?


If someone else is mastering then they probably should but any case where you're delivering stems then you should. You shouldn't deliver something that by default will cause clipping when someone else opens it up.


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## Living Fossil (Mar 17, 2019)

BenG said:


> Ah, good to know! The stems themselves aren't clipping, just the full mix, so I'll bring it down!



If the stems aren't clipping, there's no problem.
Just make the engineer aware of the fact that the sum of the stems would be clipping; he will figure out a solution (either in reducing the volume of all stems, or in applying an adequate limiting to the culprits or in riding the volume [etc....]).
Just be sure that the stems on their own don't clip.


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## jmars (Mar 17, 2019)

This seems like a conversation you should have with your engineer... They will tell you what they want.


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## BenG (Mar 17, 2019)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> If someone else is mastering then they probably should but any case where you're delivering stems then you should. You shouldn't deliver something that by default will cause clipping when someone else opens it up.


Makes sense and that's kinda what I figured!


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## BenG (Mar 17, 2019)

jmars said:


> This seems like a conversation you should have with your engineer... They will tell you what they want.


 

Fair enough! I will definitely ask them but just didn't want to ask a dumb question beforehand


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## Mihkel Zilmer (Mar 22, 2019)

Side-chain limiting like @Gerhard Westphalen mentioned is the way to go. I made a video on this topic a while back, have a look here, hope this helps!


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## Jeremy Spencer (Mar 26, 2019)

From my experience, stems are requested without clipping (or compression), and no more than -3dB.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Mar 26, 2019)

Desire Inspires said:


> Clipping is cool. A bit of "imperfection" makes it sound more realistic and less mechanical.



And leaves no headroom and unwanted distortion....that will only be emphasized during the mastering process. This might be ideal for an industrial band or something, but definitely not for orchestral music.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 26, 2019)

Wolfie2112 said:


> From my experience, stems are requested without clipping (or compression), and no more than -3dB.


If you don't want clipping then you can't really do that properly without compression/limiting. Even if your stems are only hitting -3dBFS you'll very quickly clip without limiting. My stem limiters are normally set to -2dBTP and I clip the summing all the time. If you wanted to ensure no clipping without limiting then you'd probably want to stay below at least -6dBFS. The only other solution is to ride everything to make sure it doesn't clip but on certain cues it's pretty much impossible to do. By the time you're quiet enough that it doesn't clip, it's unusably quiet.


Wolfie2112 said:


> And leaves no headroom and unwanted distortion....that will only be emphasized during the mastering process.


This clipping isn't baked into anything so it's not really an issue. The "mastering" process is the only place where it will come up and they should be able to deal with it anyway. As long as they put a limiter on the master, there won't be any clipping left.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Mar 27, 2019)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> This clipping isn't baked into anything so it's not really an issue.



Well, it is if the tracks were clipping on export. Even a mastering engineer can't fix the clipping distortion if there's any present.

I typically send stems that are at -3dB (max, that is), and that's what is usually requested in my world. I've never once used a limiter or compression for orchestral-type tracks. All one needs to do is have their DAW find the maximum peak level for a given track, and there's your limit.

This is my method, and what works for me. I'm sure there's a plethora of opinions on this.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 27, 2019)

Wolfie2112 said:


> Well, it is if the tracks were clipping on export. Even a mastering engineer can't fix the clipping distortion if there's any present.
> 
> I typically send stems that are at -3dB (max, that is), and that's what is usually requested in my world. I've never once used a limiter or compression for orchestral-type tracks. All one needs to do is have their DAW find the maximum peak level for a given track, and there's your limit.
> 
> This is my method, and what works for me. I'm sure there's a plethora of opinions on this.


Except that even if your stems are only at -3dBTP you can easily be clipping when its summed but like I said, that clipping isn't baked in anywhere and can easily be managed by the "mastering engineer" (whoever is in charge of the final levels) but they do need to be aware of it so that they can limit and not have real clipping.


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## JohnG (Mar 27, 2019)

jmars said:


> This seems like a conversation you should have with your engineer... They will tell you what they want.



If the question is, "is it ok to hand over stems that, when summed, will clip?" That sounds to me like a dumb question and you don't want to look dumb. 

I would never hand over a session with stems that, when summed, will clip. Yes it's true that the mastering engineer will mess with it all anyway, and he should be able to handle it, but really there's not really a good reason to do that unless you're out of time or you don't know how to fix it.

If it were me I'd reduce the levels on all the stems until they don't clip when summed.


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