Oversampled clipper
Clip it your way.
Most clippers give you one sound and a knob for more of it.
Clip Joint lets you decide how it clips as well as how hard. Soft and subtle, hard and obvious, or anywhere between.
A snare. A drum bus. A whole mix. Same plugin, shaped to whatever you throw at it.
Hear it
Hear it on drums and full mixes
Pick an example, then flip between the original and Clip Joint. These examples come out louder than the originals, and louder tends to sound better, so turn on Level Match to hear Clip Joint at about the original's loudness and judge the tone on its own.
Live A/B
A drill beat with Clip Joint on the mix bus, about 2 LU louder than the original. Listen for glue: whether the parts hold together as one, and whether the kick and snare keep their snap once the peaks come down.
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Range
Three jobs, three very different settings.
Same clipper every time. What changes is how you set it up.
A snare
ObviousFlatten the top of the hit so you can raise the whole thing. Clipping you can hear is the point here — the snare gets louder in the mix without getting bigger.
A drum bus
ControlledPush the kit into the ceiling while Low Protect keeps everything under 100 Hz out of the clip curve, so the kick keeps its weight instead of dragging the rest of the kit down on every hit.
A whole mix
SubtleTake a couple of dB off the peaks with a soft knee and let the quiet detail come forward to meet them. Set gently enough, the clipping itself is hard to hear, and the scope shows you where it is working.
How it clips · Style and Density
Trim the peaks. Keep the punch.
Clipping should take the tips off your transients, not completely flatten them. Set Threshold so Clip Joint shaves just enough of each peak, then reach for Density when you want more level. In Punch and Smooth it squeezes the top few dB and lifts everything underneath, so the track gets louder with less extra peak clipping than pushing Input the same amount. Style sets the curve. Punch and Smooth bend into the ceiling on their own knee widths, and they are where Softness, Density, and Tilt come into play. The transfer curve beside the Threshold knob redraws as you change Style or raise Density, so you see the shape before you commit to it. Hard is one fixed shape: Drive, Softness, Density, and Tilt do nothing there, and it stays a plain hard clip.
See it · Waveform scope
See which peaks you flattened.
The scope is the dominant element in the window and draws the clipper's output against a dB grid. The purple caps above the trace are the level the clipper took off, so a taller cap is a harder clip on that peak. The column at the right edge shows the output peak above the clipper's gain reduction.
Gain Match trims the output so a processed pass plays back at the input's loudness; set it by ear or capture it from a short measurement. It sits after every meter tap, so the scope still reports the clipper's real output and an A/B stays a comparison rather than a volume contest. It also trims what you bounce, so switch it off before you print.
Where it clips · Stereo and Mid/Side
The center and the sides don't have to clip the same way.
In Stereo, Link decides how tightly left and right share clipping attenuation. Switch to Mid/Side and each lane keeps its own Input, Threshold, Drive, Tilt, Softness, and Output, while Style, Density, Low Protect, and Mix stay shared. So you can drive the center hard for level and barely touch the sides, and the mix gets loud without the image collapsing inward. Link M-S mirrors a knob move onto the other lane and keeps the offset you already set.
The controls
Threshold sets the ceiling. These set the sound.
A threshold on its own gives you one sound and a volume knob. These change the sound itself, which is why the same plugin can take a couple of dB off a master without drawing attention to itself and make a snare the loudest thing in the room.
Style
The first decision: do you want to hear the clipping, or just notice the peak is gone? Hard is a straight hard clip: it cuts the top off flat, and it is the most obvious of the three. Punch and Smooth bend into the ceiling instead, so the flattening arrives gradually, with Punch the tighter of the two. Hard is one fixed sound: Drive, Softness, Density, and Tilt have nothing to do there.
Softness
Decides how much attention the clipping draws. Low settings land firm and obvious. High settings ease into the ceiling across a wider range, so the same amount of clipping goes by more quietly. Hard has one shape and ignores this.
Density
The quiet detail comes forward. Density squeezes the top 6 dB under the ceiling and lifts the whole signal, up to 12 dB at full, so the body of a sound rises to meet its peaks. Turn Input up by the same amount and the peaks rise just as far; Density eases them first, so they go less far past the ceiling. Once the ceiling is set, this is where the level comes from. Move it in small steps. Punch and Smooth only.
Tilt
Chooses where the clipping bites. Toward +100 the kick and bass take the clipping and the top stays clearer. Toward −100 the snare and cymbals take it instead. Zero treats both ends the same. It changes what gets clipped, not the tone. Hard ignores it.
Drive
Warmth, without moving the ceiling. At 0 dB Drive is a true bypass and the clip stays clean. Turn it up and the sound thickens, with a little more presence and a slightly softer top, while Threshold still decides where the clipping starts. Punch and Smooth only; Hard ignores it.
Low Protect
Keeps the low end solid while everything above it gets clipped. It splits the signal at 100 Hz, sends only what is above into the clip, then puts the low end back, so a kick stops dragging the rest of the track down every time it lands. The low band skips Drive and Density too, so with Density up, keep an ear on the low-end balance. The split is linear phase and adds 10 ms of latency, which your DAW compensates for.
Mix
Keeps the original dynamics underneath the clipped version. At 100% you hear the clipper on its own. Pull it back and the unclipped signal comes in behind it, exactly in time with the clipped one, so you get the density without losing all the movement. The blend is taken before Input and Output, so the unclipped part stays at its original level. Parallel clipping, in one control.
Where it goes
On the source, ahead of the limiter, or on the mix.
On the source
A track or a bus
Drums, bass, a single snare. Set the threshold a decibel or two under your loudest peaks, push Input until the caps light up in the scope, then use Density for the level you want. Pull Mix back to blend the unclipped signal in underneath, and the same move becomes parallel clipping.
Ahead of a limiter
Peak duty, before the limiter sees it
A clipper answers a peak by flattening it where it happens rather than turning the level down around it. Transparent Peak Control is built for that job: the Smooth style with Threshold at −1 dB, no Density, and no extra input, so it only touches the loudest moments and your limiter has less left to do. Lower the threshold if your peaks sit further down.
On the mix
The whole master
The Master pack covers a finished mix, from a gentle rounding of the loudest peaks in Transparent Master up to Maximum Loud, the loudest setting in the set. Loud & Clean and Streaming Loud turn on Low Protect to keep the low end out of the clip curve, and Mid-Side Master clips the center and sides separately so the image stays open while the level comes up.
Having used the ones we all know about I didn't think I'd be so quick to make this my main clipper for the 2Bus! Absolutely solid!
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What does it do to latency?
Low Protect adds 10 ms. Oversampling above 1× adds its own filter delay, less with Minimum Phase than Linear Phase. Linear Phase is the neutral filter; Minimum Phase trades phase accuracy for lower latency. Clip Joint reports the exact total to your DAW, which compensates for all of it during mixing. For live monitoring, 1× with Low Protect off is the lowest-latency setting.
Do the factory presets install with the plugin?
Yes. The installer places the factory presets alongside the plugin, sorted into the Master, Bus, Character, and Utility packs. Anything you save yourself lands in your own user pack.
Which systems and plugin formats are supported?
Minimum systems are macOS 11 Big Sur on Apple Silicon or Intel, in VST3, AU, and AAX; Windows 10 64-bit, in VST3 and AAX; and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or a comparable modern x86_64 distribution, in VST3.
How many computers can I activate, and can I work offline?
One license covers three machine activations, and you can deactivate a machine when you need to move one. Browser activation is the quickest route; an offline request-and-response flow covers a studio computer that cannot complete the browser approval directly.
Is Clip Joint a subscription?
No. The license is perpetual, so the version you take does not expire. Updates within version 1 are included and nothing renews.
Do I need an account if I pay nothing?
Yes. The license is issued to a SoundHive account, so checkout asks for your email if you are not already signed in. The plugin then signs in to activate.
Pricing
Name your price.
$29 is what we think Clip Joint is worth. The floor is $0, and a $0 copy is the same plugin on the same license as a $29 one. Pick the number that matches what it does for your work.
- Perpetual license
- 3 machine activations
- Free updates within v1
- No subscription
The fine print
Specs & system requirements
Specifications
System requirements
macOS
- macOS 11 Big Sur minimum
- Apple Silicon or Intel processor
- VST3, AU, AAX formats
- 4 GB RAM minimum
Windows
- Windows 10 64-bit minimum
- Intel or AMD 64-bit processor
- VST3, AAX formats
- 4 GB RAM minimum
Linux
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or comparable modern x86_64
- x86_64 processor
- VST3 format
- 4 GB RAM minimum