Leit Audio has released UnClip, a free automatic restoration plugin designed to repair short peaks damaged by hard digital clipping.
Hard clipping flattens the top or bottom of a waveform. Turning the file down afterward only reduces its level — the flattened waveform and the distortion it created remain. UnClip detects those clipped areas and reconstructs a plausible continuation of the waveform through the damaged samples.
Unlike a detector that assumes clipping must occur at 0 dBFS, UnClip looks for the shape of hard clipping itself. This allows it to recognize material that was clipped first and then turned down or otherwise processed afterward.
Repair is selective. UnClip uses the clean waveform around each damaged area as context, but only samples identified as clipped are replaced. There is no threshold, sensitivity or repair amount to set.
The interface has one main control: Output, which provides up to 24 dB of attenuation after reconstruction. Repaired peaks can rise above the original clipping ceiling, so the control can be used to create headroom before further processing or export.
UnClip is intended for editing, restoration and mixing of recorded audio with short accidental overloads. It is not a limiter and does not prevent clipping, and it is not designed as a general-purpose distortion remover.
Features include:
- Automatic reconstruction of short hard-clipped peaks.
- Detects clipping even after the damaged audio has been turned down.
- Replaces only samples identified as clipped.
- Uses surrounding clean audio as context for reconstruction.
- No threshold, sensitivity or repair amount control.
- Output trim from -24 to 0 dB.
- Mono and stereo operation.
- Stereo channels analyzed and repaired independently.
- Host-linked, latency-matched bypass.
- Approximately 99.5 ms reported latency at 44.1 and 48 kHz.
- Internal double-precision processing.
UnClip is free to download and use. A free Leit Audio account is required for downloads.
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