nvrl
4b1a89626e
- Quench 0.1.0: first release. - Ballast 0.1.0: first release. - Mark both released in docs/ideas.md and add them to the release table.
Quench
Quench clips the top of the mix as hard as you like and lets the sub pass clean. Current version 0.1.0.
Riddim and dubstep masters are clipped hard. A plain clipper clips the sum of the sub and everything above it. Near the sub's peaks only one side of the top gets clipped, so the clipping takes energy out at the sub's rate: the sub loses level, and the low end fills with products that were not in the mix. Quench splits the signal at a frequency you set, never clips the sub, and clips only the top, in the room the sub leaves under the ceiling.
Install on Windows
Copy Quench.clap into C:\Program Files\Common Files\CLAP\. In FL Studio
2024.1 or newer, open Options → Manage plugins, enable Verify plugins, and Find
installed plugins. Load Quench last on the master or on the bass bus. Keep the
font license with redistributed packages.
Work with it
- Put Quench where you would put a clipper: last on the master, or last on the bass bus. Before a true-peak limiter is fine.
- Set Ceiling, the highest output peak.
- Set Split above the highest sub note, or at Anvil's Split when Anvil makes the sub. Everything below Split passes without clipping.
- Raise Drive until the top clips as hard as you want. The panel shows how far the top is clipped.
- Press PLAIN to hear a plain clipper at the same settings, then QUENCH again. DELTA plays only what Quench takes away. The listen choice is not saved and goes back to QUENCH when the editor closes.
The panel shows:
- Low end changed by: how much the band below Split differs from the input, against the sub's level, for Quench and for a plain clip of the same signal. Lower is cleaner. It reads "—" when no sub plays.
- Top clipped by: how far the top's loudest peak went past its room.
- Sub peak · room left: the sub's peak after Drive and the room it leaves the top under the ceiling.
- The scope: the output (grey), the sub band (blue), and the sub plus or minus the top's room (thin lines). The output stays between the thin lines.
Other controls:
- Hold keeps the room the sub's peak needs for this long. With a hold longer than half a period of the lowest note (17 ms at 30 Hz), the top's clip level stays steady through the sub's cycle and the top does not pump with the sub. Shorter holds give the top a little more room between sub peaks, and that room then changes at the sub's rate.
- Soft bends the top's clip: 0 % is a hard clip, 100 % a soft curve from the start. The ceiling stays a hard limit.
- Bypass crossfades to the input, delayed by the latency.
When the sub alone reaches the ceiling, the top has no room left. The panel then warns: lower Drive or the sub. A safety clip still holds the ceiling, and that clip does cut the sub.
How it works
A Linkwitz–Riley crossover splits the signal at Split. The sub passes. The top is clipped symmetrically at the ceiling minus the sub's held peak, so the sum of sub and top never goes over the ceiling.
Clipping the top also makes products below Split, for example difference tones between its partials. Quench high-passes what the clip removed at Split, so those products do not reach the low band. High-passing lets a few peaks overshoot. Two correction passes clip those again and high-pass the correction, and a final hard clip at the ceiling takes the small rest. All of this runs at 4× oversampling. A safety clip after the downsampler catches the filters' ringing; it reads "idle" or a few hundredths of a dB.
Measured on a 50 Hz sub at −10.5 dBFS under a top of five unrelated partials peaking about 6 dB over the ceiling:
| Sub level | Low-band products | |
|---|---|---|
| Plain clip | −2.2 dB | −16 dB |
| Quench | +0.04 dB | −35 dB |
Low-band products are everything below 110 Hz except the sub, against the sub's level.
Quench pays for this in loudness. The top gets the room on the sub's quieter side only, so at the same ceiling Quench measured 0.5–1.2 dB lower in RMS than a plain clip. Add Drive to make up for it.
Timing and limits
Latency is the oversampling filters: 37 samples (0.8 ms at 48 kHz), reported to the host for delay compensation.
The split is a slope, not a wall. A top whose own fundamental lies near Split, for example a distorted patch an octave above a 49 Hz sub, is partly in the sub band. That part passes unclipped and takes up room, and Quench helps less there: on a saw top at 98 Hz it changed the low end about as much as a plain clip. Keep the top's lowest partial at least an octave above Split.
Quench keeps the ceiling on sample peaks. True peaks between samples can still go a little over it: put a true-peak limiter after Quench if the master needs one. Each channel is clipped on its own; Quench does not link the channels or turn the sub to mono.