Should one clip parameters to be within min/max ranges?

Audio Plugins
1

Hi all,

I just had a customer complain that one of my plugins makes evil sounds in Numerology when he sends it an LFO that goes outside of the min/max parameter range. The evil sounds aren’t that mysterious. I’m just baffled that a DAW will send values to a plugin outside of the specified min/max range?

Is this normal DAW behavior? All of the DAWs I have worked with in the past will clip the parameters to a given range. Is there something about this in the VST or AU standards? Or should we presume that min/max ranges won’t necessarily be respected by the DAWs, and put bounds clipping in our own parameter calculations?

Sean Costello

2

In my experience of DAWs, I think you should always expect the unexpected!

3

Be very strict with limiting a program’s output to valid ranges, and very forgiving when receiving input from external programs.