Cheap Haircut

Cheap Haircut

Some peaks contribute to the sound. Others just eat headroom and demand their own dressing room. Cheap Haircut deals with the second kind.

Turn up Input, bring down Threshold, and the samples that cross the clipping boundary get cut back. That can make a snare feel more immediate, give a drum bus some bite, or let a mix sit louder before the final limiter has to work so hard. You'll hear the attitude when you push it. That's the point.

Hard cut. Soft landing.

Hard Clip draws a sharp line: anything beyond the ceiling gets stopped there. It's the setting for a firmer edge and more obvious harmonic grit. Soft Clip bends the signal as it approaches the ceiling, rounding the transition while leaving quieter material outside the clipping region alone. Choose the cut that suits the track, not the one that sounds tougher in a menu.

Drive it, then decide how much stays.

Input gives you ±12 dB to feed the clipping stage. Threshold sets the ceiling from 0 to −24 dB. Those are separate controls on purpose: one decides how hard you hit the clipper; the other decides where the haircut starts. Output gives you another ±12 dB to set the level afterward.

Mix blends the processed signal with the clean signal from 0 to 100%. You can clip a snare pretty aggressively and bring back some of its original peak shape, or add a touch of density to a full mix without committing to the entire cut. Turn on oversampling to reduce the aliasing that clipping can generate.

See the damage. Hear the evidence.

The live clip scope shows the original waveform in grey and the output in fluorescent green. When the grey extends beyond the green, you're looking at the part that got trimmed. Hit Delta to audition the removed content by itself. If the Delta signal contains the soul of your kick drum, perhaps back away from the scissors.

Everything on the panel

Input (±12 dB), Threshold (0 to −24 dB), Mix (0–100%), Output (±12 dB), Hard/Soft Clip, Oversample, Delta, and Power.

64-bit VST3 for Windows, macOS, and Linux; 64-bit AU for macOS. Perpetual single-user license with three simultaneous activations.

Cheap Haircut. A little off the top.