JS Effect Spotlight: Soft_Clipper

Did you know REAPER includes over 250 audio effects? JS Effect Spotlight is a series of articles highlighting the often overlooked JS effects included with REAPER.

The Soft_Clipper effect written by Shwa is another hidden gem in the JS effects bundle and one I use a lot in mixing rock music.

A soft clipper takes the loudest peaks and rounds them off. Often this is a more effective way of increasing loudness than a brickwall limiter, it doesn’t pump!

Pushing it hard can cause distortion but when clipping off a couple dB either on a master or individual tracks it can be very transparent.

The JS soft_clipper has only two controls:

Boost increases the input up to 9dB

Output brickwall is the ceiling or absolute max output level which can be set from -3 and +1 dBFS

You can use this on your master bus either before or in place of a brickwall limiter. I find it very useful on kick and snare tracks where I need them to be loud but not actually take up headroom.

Got a favorite JS effect? Let us know in the comments below.