Soft Clip

A smooth, musical clipper that rounds peaks instead of slicing them flat. As you push the drive, the tops and bottoms of the wave ease over into saturation, adding warm odd-harmonic grit without the harsh fizz of a hard clip. It's the standalone version of the Soft Clip mode from the Distort module — same antialiased curve, now with its own panel and CV.

How it works

The input is normalized, run through an antialiased (ADAA) soft-clipping shaper, makeup-compensated so the level stays sane as you drive harder, and DC-blocked on the way out. The antialiasing keeps the harmonics from folding back as ugly aliasing, so it stays clean even on bright material.

Controls

  • Drive — how hard the signal is pushed into the clipper, 0–1. At 0 the

audio passes straight through, untouched. Turn it up for progressively rounder, fatter saturation.

  • Bias — asymmetry, 0–1. At 0 the clipping is symmetric (pure odd

harmonics). Turn it up to skew the curve and introduce even harmonics for a hollower, more tube-like color. The added offset is removed automatically, so it shapes the tone without shifting the DC level.

  • Level — output trim, 0–2×. Leave it at 1 for unity gain; pull it down

to tame a hot signal or push past unity to make up for level lost in heavy drive. The output is always clamped to a safe ±5 V.

Inputs & outputs

  • In L / In R — the audio you want to saturate. Mono? Just use L — that one

signal is clipped once and sent to both outputs. Patch a stereo pair and each side gets its own clipping path through the shared knobs, so a wide source stays wide.

  • Drive / Bias CV — modulate Drive and Bias with control voltage. Each CV

jogs its knob around its current setting (±10 V covers about half the range). Patch an envelope into Drive CV for dynamic dirt, or an LFO into Bias CV for a slowly shifting harmonic character.

  • Out L / Out R — the clipped audio. With stereo in but only L cabled, the

channels fold to mono automatically so nothing goes missing.

Tips

  • For classic "loudness without peaks," set a moderate Drive and pull Level

down slightly — the waveform stays full but the transients are tamed.

  • A touch of Bias thickens vocals and bass; too much gets nasal, so dial to

taste.

  • Because the clipper is antialiased, it's safe on high, bright sources where a

naive clipper would buzz.