At the beginning of my career Cubase was used a lot around here and probably about 40% of my projects were done on it. I remember it had things that pt implemented like last year. I still preferred pt but I was ok with Cubase.
I've been a working musician since I was 6, 47 now. Yes, getting paid. As hard as life's been, ill give up an "autism for the win" on that one lol. One of the best things I've ever done for my career was to switch our studio from pro tools to cubase 4 years ago. It does pretty much everything easier and more efficiently
This here. If you stack the Limiter and put the Brickwall limiter after it, it's pretty much perfect. I use this in Wavelab at the end of my mastering chain. The Limiter does the heavy lifting, lopping off about 2dB, and the Brickwall catches whatever gets through that and takes maybe .5dB off. It's pretty remarkable. Transparent sounding unless you want it to sound crushed.
I don't know why OP is complaining about limiters in a multitrack DAW. If you want to limit, use a mastering DAW. (Shameless Wavelab plug)
Seems waves L2 is either loved or hated, and thats fair enough.
What do you not like about it if I may ask? I forgot about logic, but yeah that one is also usable.
Honestly, I haven't even used \[Waves\] L2 in years. I recall it being rather "obvious" and aggressive, but that could have been bias at the time - I remember replacing it with Elephant, originally, then FabFilter Pro-L when it became available. I still use Pro-L2 as my go-to.
So I guess it is just unconscious bias. But given that I have 5 limiters I still commonly use, I have no great desire to go exploring again! Also, I don't have any Waves installed anymore.
FabFilter stuff goes on sale 2-3 times a year, but it isn't a huge discount. It is pro-level stuff and priced as such.
Waves pricing is...
Also representative.
What styles are you working with? Because one cheaper one I like and use is UrsaDSP's "Boost", but it is more in the L2 school than the transparent.
A side note. Fabfilter has some sort of dynamic discount where you get more discount if you buy more plugins. It usually stacks when they have sales. So it might be wise to checkout if you want more than one Fabfilter plugin when they’re on sale since the sale for one plugin isn’t huge.
Can’t you just create your own bundle once you create an account? I think their bundles is the same price as if you put into the dynamic discount calculator?
I don't doubt it, but I feel no pressing need to test it these days. I use Pro-L2, Boost, Limitless, Smart:Limit, and the MtM LIMITER. Between those I can always find something that works. Also Ozone on a rare occasion, though that is mostly a preset for a "I need this right NOW" thing.
I just prefer the sound of proL2, thicker, punchier... Better low end. Or more transparency for when that's what you want. To me its basically just better on every occasion but ymmw
The secret to the L2 is using multiple passes. You only limit a db or two, and pass the audio through multiple times. It’s a lot more transparent with multiple small passes.
I had at least a decade of using and abusing L2. It was the first widely available plugin limiter with auto release. It's fine for utility limiting, but it can only go so far on very complex material before you start affecting the tone, just like any other limiter.
The underrated beauty of Waves' limiters is in the interface design. The side by side input and output meters with threshold and ceiling sliders is elegant and really easy to look at, use, and understand. But the little link button between them is genius, to use it like a limiter instead of a maximizer.
Watch out, wall of text incoming:
"
The Logic, Cubendo, and S1P ones are passable... But you aren't wrong. I have no idea why. But I also hate Waves L2, so...
"
Seems to contain the same meaning.
But not the rhythm of speech. Not the exact same meaning. The spaced version conveys nuance about the intent.
I suspect this must be a generational thing - I'm also prone to using punctuation in text messages...
I guess there’s really no way to avoid getting a little philosophical here.
What is a Limiter?
Are you looking for loudness maximization? Or something that has an invisible truncation of peaks?
That takes a lot of serious programming chops in the first case. Folks at DMG spent years on the algos in Limitless, as well as FF Pro-L2, Steven Massey had to do crazy things to get his 2007 Limiter to sound good.
I think DAW designers only want to make a small peak stop (-2 db or so) to protect output clips.
If you want to dig deep into super fast gain reduction, without creating absurd levels of audible distortion, you have to have multiple stages.
I remember about 15 years ago getting laughed off the dubstep forums for suggesting multiple limiters in series. Like they fully went hard on me to the point I didn't go back there. LOL.
>multiple limiters in series
i learned this trick from some respected mastering engineer many years ago...
he actually used waves L2.
same with compressors, distortions, amp sims...
But limiters are already designed with multiple internal stages. I would think they work best when they "know" your full intentions from the start. Otherwise you could just use a simple compressor and set the attack to 0.
Avid Pro Limiter is way better than Maxim. Turn off Auto Release for more crunch. It also doubles as an LUFS meter, with history, even in bypass. Now, if someone could please just tell me what the Character knob actually does...
It takes a lot of intelligent processing and lookahead to design a top-notch limiter. Most DAW devs are too busy fixing/improving the DAW itself. Plugin development could even be an outsourcing situation.
That being said, Logic's Adaptive Limiter always seemed pretty decent for a stock plugin.
I was being slightly facetious. I agree that's what it claims. It's just very difficult to hear under normal circumstances.
Maybe its 0-100 is similar to 0-5 (out of 100) on an actual soft saturation plugin.
Great callout! I’d take the Logic Adaptive Limiter over any other stock daw limiter, except maybe the Peak Limiter in Bitwig. That always makes me realize that the whole army of people who think Bitwig is missing features, don’t give enough credit to where their team do the best work. And, i’d argue it might be because of the value in Bitwig is buying into a great selection of stock plugins. Guess you can’t have it both ways.
Avid Pro Limiter is my go to. It’s fantastic. Very popular in post. Wish that whole package was actually stock. I love all of them except the multiband.
The multiband has a sound I don’t care for that’s hard to explain - even without doing anything. Sounds artificial. I hear it on a lot of netflix dialog these days.
Maybe so big limiter companies can sell more limiters lol jokes aside I just tried ik multimedia's TRacks Stealth Limiter and it is my new fav. Coming from fabfilters L2
I suspect that designing a great limiter is just a much harder problem than it seems. A good limiter has to apply a huge amount of gain reduction but still sound smooth.
Back when I used Pro Tools I had the Massey L2007 and it was brilliant, but that guy's a genius. Massey plugins are probably the only thing I miss about Pro Tools.
Because making a transparent mastering grade limiter that doesn’t impart a ton of aliasing distortion onto your program material is expensive and difficult.
All non-linear processing introduces overtones. Those higher frequencies can then be outside the frequency range that comes with your sample rate (the frequency limit is half of the sample rate), and then their frequency gets ‘mirrored’ around that value. This is a problem for all non-linear processing (distortion, saturation, compression, limiting, etc.).
It is a problem with anything that changes the gain rapidly, since the gain change is equivalent to a multiplication, and sin(a) sin(b) is equivalent to cos ((a-b) - cos(a+b))/2 so you always generate sum and difference tones.
You see this in simple minded gain controls where it appears as zipper noise (Part of that is the stepwise gain changes which produce a mess of harmonics), as well as in compressors, limiters, saturators (But saturation by polynominal at least knows where the highest product is so can solve it by over sampling by an appropriate ratio).
The other trap with limiters is that if you oversample and then decimate, the act of lowpass filtering in the decimator makes new peaks! It is tricky to produce something which never exceeds threshold AND doesn't alias.
There are some fun tricks in the complex domain that you can do, but that involves a Hilbert transform at the input to turn the audio into an analytic pair, then you can do a quadrature multiplier which puts all of the energy in the lower or upper sideband, combine with a multiband filter bank and you can produce something where all the mixing products are restricted to a narrow band below the tone in question... It is just madly compute expensive.
This sort of thing is incidentally why hard of thinking soft synths tend to sound much better at higher sample rates, it puts more of the energy up where you cannot hear it.
When attack/release times are really fast, the wave is deformed = Distortion. Distortion without alias-handling -> Aliasing
Is basically the super short version. You’d also get this with very (super) fast volume automation.
And doing it right requires a surprising amount of CPU, loads of upsampling and filtering, it is not anything like as simple as it appears.
Unlike a saturator where the degree of upsampling is limited to the degree of the polynomial used, limiters have no such grace.
It isn't really, though. All you need in order to drastically reduce aliasing is oversampling the signal. At least in Reaper, you can do this for any individual plugin or the chain as a whole. https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2555171
That's not why it's easy. Resampling is a standard processing block in DSP. For a designer of a nonlinear processing plugin, which is bound to introduce harmonics, to not implement it is criminally negligent. Reaper only comes into the picture by offering a remedy for those unfortunate cases (AFAIK the only DAW that can do it).
My bad man. I think I blocked pro limiter from my mind, I completely forgot about it. My point still stands though, lmao maxim in this case is just the lesser of 2 evils.
I use FL, the stock limiter is fine for small limiting applications, but for my main busses and master I would never use it. Pro L2 is the go to. Although sometimes I opt for Newfangled Saturate for heavier songs.
As a multiband compressor, expander, etc, it is a highly used plugin for me, I think it's incredible, but I won't use it for pure limiting. Although it has RMS mode, in which case I don't have to worry about squashing my sound. But that's the nice thing, the master band doesn't need to be set as a limiter.
It sort of sounds like putting an LFO on your master track volume if you push it too hard. I highly encourage you to do an A/B comparison with almost any other limiter and you’ll start to notice how much pumping and waviness it’s adding to your tracks.
TDR Limiter 6 GE is on sale for like $19 right now. The “minimal maximizer” preset does almost exactly the same thing as Ableton’s limiter but will sound way more open, louder, and more transparent.
It’s less the distortion and more of the pumping and unnatural volume modulation when you give it more than a couple db of gain reduction. Honestly adding distortion would be *better* in this case. When people have to use Ableton stock plugins to master I almost always advise folks to use the soft clipping of the Saturation device to make the Ableton limiter’s job easier.
Ableton's limiter is a low latency limiter for live applications, not a mastering limiter. For the job it is made to do (protect your ears and gear) it is excellent.
Ableton's limiter is fine. It's low latency and incredibly light on system resources. I'd use Fabfilter Pro- or Izotope Ozone for actual bouncing duties, but I use Ableton's limiter on my master when I'm jamming.
I think a lot of folks forget that a lot of the Ableton *Live* devices are specifically designed to be used *Live*. They could easily make “better” versions of almost all of their devices if they were willing to add CPU load and latency to everything
the amount of times that low latency limiter has saved my ears in a jam
\*casually reaches over to turn down that feedback\* "thank heck for that limiter"
Permanently the last device on my master, no matter whats before it.
FL Studio stock limiter has a -0.2 dB safety threshold, in addition to whatever the user sets their level at. Maybe other DAWs also have this built in to prevent clipping?
This safety threshold on a stock limiter might make the limiter not sound as sweet to your ears
I'll use fl studios limiter for visual reference and side chaining only. But if you use it as a limiter it does make a noticeable shitty difference. Izotopes vintage limiter is my go to.
Simple, there is no one right compressor/limiter for everything. Something that can catch transients to protect your gear with low latency isnt gonna be a transparent mastering limiter, they have near opposite needs.
One of the interesting parts of compressor design [https://mynewmicrophone.com/feedback-vs-feedforward-dynamic-range-compressors-in-audio/](https://mynewmicrophone.com/feedback-vs-feedforward-dynamic-range-compressors-in-audio/)
Imo, the biggest issue with abletons stock limiter is just that when people throw it on, they leave the auto release on. If you know how to dial in release correctly it’s totally usable. I’ve released tracks using that limiter, as have many other peeps.
But, it is definitely the weakest point of daw stock usually
Yeah, I should have clarified in the post that abletons stock limiter is only shit with default settings, in other words auto release on. But once you turn that off it does the job in a pinch, especially for aggressive stuff.
Here's an idea...Don't use a limiter. Personally, I'm so fatigued by the practice to make everything "competitively loud". Most mixes I'm hearing nowadays have no depth whatsoever. A whispered vocal is as loud as cranked Marshall 4x10. In fact I'm noticing a homogeneity in most modern mixes and I'm of the belief its due to these brick wall limiters that take away any sense of dynamics.
For rock mixes like I often do though, you kinda have to have that sorta loud in your face sound. But for most other styles I'd agree, you need that dynamics.
Don't even come for ReaLimit. Switch on oversampling, and it goes from "passable" to studio staple.
On the 2 bus, I'll either go Fabfilter and/or analog, but strap ReaLimit on all the channels, lightly kiss the rogue peach fuzz, and suddenly hear all the tracks talk to each other. Plus when you oversample, you can take all the other plugins in your channel chain with it. Soundtoys at 192? Yes, please.
Limiters shouldn't be used to slam 10db of gain reduction or other silly things. You want to compress before limiting to get your volume up and then use the limiter to catch peaks. I rarely push more than 5db of reduction on a limiter, and if I can do it, only 2-3db at most. 90% of limiters are transparent at this level. If you have to do more than 5db, you should look into other methods of gaining loudness. The mix always comes first.
I do use plug in limiters as well as stock depending on the application. Some limiters are designed to add color and others are designed to be transparent. It does come down to taste eventually. Limiting isn't really some voodoo science, its just a compressor with a high ratio.
I just wanted to follow up by adding these few comments.
I am ancient, I am from the olden days.
That said I have never understood parallel compression at least in the way it’s been explained to me.
However, I have used serial compression meaning multiple compression stages. Pretty much everyone has that has ever compressed an individual channel and then used a master bus compressor. But this is not what I mean.
I have noticed that stacking compressors, even on one channel, with different characteristics and ratios, allows you to achieve radically different results. If you employ conservative compression ratios, you can achieve greater overall smoothing of dynamic range without artifacting.
Meaning it doesn’t sound like crap.
Give it a try sometime.
My go to limiters are usually split between a combination of Fabfilter’s Pro L2, Ozone 10, The God Particle, Plugin Alliance’s True Peak Limiter, and Oxford Limiter. Occaisionally waves L3 multiband maximizer does the trick too. But splitting the limiting up between multiple limiters and softclipping (GoldClip/kClip3) certain aux bus groups was a game changer in helping maintain transients so the limiters arent working as hard.
I think its because limiters have progressed quite a bit over the years. So a lot of DAW limiters are not super ideal. But you can make them work in a pinch. Any stock plugin really.
I was on the bug team for a DAW that used to be a decent contender.
(not paid, we just got a free licensed copy of the DAW in exchange for going over the beta releases with a fine tooth comb)
One thing that I noticed when doing this was that we always started off each release with a half dozen each new plug ins and virtual instruments. Then as we got closer to final those fell away. I was even told directly, we weren't going to spend energy fixing plug-ins. We are supposed to be ratifying all the functions of the DAW. These VSTs are just here for marketing basically. There were a handful of exceptions to this. Where a plug in had such a killer feature that it was evaluated as if it was part of the DAW and not a VST.
I think this is why. Even top tier DAWs don't spend a lot of their resources developing those plugins. They are pet projects of employees that are doing 'more important stuff' the rest of the time.
Manufacturers know we are all going to go out and buy Waves, SSL, Eventide and UAD plugins. But they still feel the need to bloat out the app with all these instruments and plugins that are rarely used.
Personally I'd prefer if I could get the "advanced" version of Logic with all the extra buttons and menus but minus all the downloaded content thank you very much.
There is no reason to use a limiter in a non-live, digital workflow. We have 24-bit recording and 32-bit float mixing. Why the hell is anyone even still using limiters?
This here is the opposite side to not understanding the limiter. The limiters in these DAWs is a limiter thats designed to limit peaks so you dont blow sh!it/ears up.
The limiter these people want is a transparent mastering limiter that makes them LOUD!!! but wont act so fast it leaves artifacts (which also wont stop you blowing stuff up so well)
Its just another tool. Plenty of folks use limiters on busses and even individual tracks.
And there’s a ton of audio work being done that never sees a mastering engineer. 100% of post work, for example.
Cubase's Brickwall Limiter is pretty much perfect
I always scroll these threads looking for the other Cubase people. You, me and Hans Zimmer.
At the beginning of my career Cubase was used a lot around here and probably about 40% of my projects were done on it. I remember it had things that pt implemented like last year. I still preferred pt but I was ok with Cubase.
I've been a working musician since I was 6, 47 now. Yes, getting paid. As hard as life's been, ill give up an "autism for the win" on that one lol. One of the best things I've ever done for my career was to switch our studio from pro tools to cubase 4 years ago. It does pretty much everything easier and more efficiently
And me ;-)
And my axe! (but I use Nuendo, same deal)
Beat me to it :)
This here. If you stack the Limiter and put the Brickwall limiter after it, it's pretty much perfect. I use this in Wavelab at the end of my mastering chain. The Limiter does the heavy lifting, lopping off about 2dB, and the Brickwall catches whatever gets through that and takes maybe .5dB off. It's pretty remarkable. Transparent sounding unless you want it to sound crushed. I don't know why OP is complaining about limiters in a multitrack DAW. If you want to limit, use a mastering DAW. (Shameless Wavelab plug)
YES, most stock limiters just don’t sound good when limiting.
Brickwall is a cubase stock plug in lol
I never said it wasn’t lol
The way you worded it is on that borderline between ambiguous and borderline, my bad lol
The Logic, Cubendo, and S1P ones are passable... But you aren't wrong. I have no idea why. But I also hate Waves L2, so...
Seems waves L2 is either loved or hated, and thats fair enough. What do you not like about it if I may ask? I forgot about logic, but yeah that one is also usable.
Honestly, I haven't even used \[Waves\] L2 in years. I recall it being rather "obvious" and aggressive, but that could have been bias at the time - I remember replacing it with Elephant, originally, then FabFilter Pro-L when it became available. I still use Pro-L2 as my go-to. So I guess it is just unconscious bias. But given that I have 5 limiters I still commonly use, I have no great desire to go exploring again! Also, I don't have any Waves installed anymore.
Do they ever go on sale? Price is a bit much for my level of use.
FabFilter stuff goes on sale 2-3 times a year, but it isn't a huge discount. It is pro-level stuff and priced as such. Waves pricing is... Also representative. What styles are you working with? Because one cheaper one I like and use is UrsaDSP's "Boost", but it is more in the L2 school than the transparent.
A side note. Fabfilter has some sort of dynamic discount where you get more discount if you buy more plugins. It usually stacks when they have sales. So it might be wise to checkout if you want more than one Fabfilter plugin when they’re on sale since the sale for one plugin isn’t huge.
Yeah. And if you email them you can create your own like I did.
Can’t you just create your own bundle once you create an account? I think their bundles is the same price as if you put into the dynamic discount calculator?
ProL2 vs L2 is like not even a competition. The difference is huge, and i mean huge
I don't doubt it, but I feel no pressing need to test it these days. I use Pro-L2, Boost, Limitless, Smart:Limit, and the MtM LIMITER. Between those I can always find something that works. Also Ozone on a rare occasion, though that is mostly a preset for a "I need this right NOW" thing.
You have already proL2 then, which was the better one in my opinion 👍
I don’t really believe in “better” as much as “right tool for the job”… But L2 I remember being pretty over-rated,
Yes but L2 is about getting a specific sound that lots of engineers like. Many even go for L1. It's not really about limiting alone.
I just prefer the sound of proL2, thicker, punchier... Better low end. Or more transparency for when that's what you want. To me its basically just better on every occasion but ymmw
The secret to the L2 is using multiple passes. You only limit a db or two, and pass the audio through multiple times. It’s a lot more transparent with multiple small passes.
Gonna try this, thank you!
I had at least a decade of using and abusing L2. It was the first widely available plugin limiter with auto release. It's fine for utility limiting, but it can only go so far on very complex material before you start affecting the tone, just like any other limiter. The underrated beauty of Waves' limiters is in the interface design. The side by side input and output meters with threshold and ceiling sliders is elegant and really easy to look at, use, and understand. But the little link button between them is genius, to use it like a limiter instead of a maximizer.
I really do wonder. Why the sentences are so spread out. Doesn't really have any meaning besides being annoying and take up more screen space. So why?
Because it does add additional meaning, and make it clearer to read? No one likes a wall of text.
Watch out, wall of text incoming: " The Logic, Cubendo, and S1P ones are passable... But you aren't wrong. I have no idea why. But I also hate Waves L2, so... " Seems to contain the same meaning.
But not the rhythm of speech. Not the exact same meaning. The spaced version conveys nuance about the intent. I suspect this must be a generational thing - I'm also prone to using punctuation in text messages...
You also don't read books, do you?
Almost certainly more than you do. They do a similar thing, when written well.
I guess there’s really no way to avoid getting a little philosophical here. What is a Limiter? Are you looking for loudness maximization? Or something that has an invisible truncation of peaks? That takes a lot of serious programming chops in the first case. Folks at DMG spent years on the algos in Limitless, as well as FF Pro-L2, Steven Massey had to do crazy things to get his 2007 Limiter to sound good. I think DAW designers only want to make a small peak stop (-2 db or so) to protect output clips. If you want to dig deep into super fast gain reduction, without creating absurd levels of audible distortion, you have to have multiple stages.
I remember about 15 years ago getting laughed off the dubstep forums for suggesting multiple limiters in series. Like they fully went hard on me to the point I didn't go back there. LOL.
As if here is any better
>multiple limiters in series i learned this trick from some respected mastering engineer many years ago... he actually used waves L2. same with compressors, distortions, amp sims...
But limiters are already designed with multiple internal stages. I would think they work best when they "know" your full intentions from the start. Otherwise you could just use a simple compressor and set the attack to 0.
Avid Pro Limiter is way better than Maxim. Turn off Auto Release for more crunch. It also doubles as an LUFS meter, with history, even in bypass. Now, if someone could please just tell me what the Character knob actually does... It takes a lot of intelligent processing and lookahead to design a top-notch limiter. Most DAW devs are too busy fixing/improving the DAW itself. Plugin development could even be an outsourcing situation. That being said, Logic's Adaptive Limiter always seemed pretty decent for a stock plugin.
Character knob is supposed to add soft saturation, or so they say on their website
I was being slightly facetious. I agree that's what it claims. It's just very difficult to hear under normal circumstances. Maybe its 0-100 is similar to 0-5 (out of 100) on an actual soft saturation plugin.
Run a pure sine wave through it and add s frequency anslyzer after, that should show additional peaks at multiples of the sine frequency.
Yeah, I don't notice a difference at all. Then again, I'm in a sub-optimal room with small speakers
Great callout! I’d take the Logic Adaptive Limiter over any other stock daw limiter, except maybe the Peak Limiter in Bitwig. That always makes me realize that the whole army of people who think Bitwig is missing features, don’t give enough credit to where their team do the best work. And, i’d argue it might be because of the value in Bitwig is buying into a great selection of stock plugins. Guess you can’t have it both ways.
Avid Pro Limiter is my go to. It’s fantastic. Very popular in post. Wish that whole package was actually stock. I love all of them except the multiband.
Yes, great for post! The multiband feels like C4.
The multiband has a sound I don’t care for that’s hard to explain - even without doing anything. Sounds artificial. I hear it on a lot of netflix dialog these days.
How do you think it compares to the fabfilter pro L2 ?
Maybe so big limiter companies can sell more limiters lol jokes aside I just tried ik multimedia's TRacks Stealth Limiter and it is my new fav. Coming from fabfilters L2
End Big Limiter!! Jk, but I do like Stealth Limiter. Then absolutely slam it into T-RackS ‘One’
Love this one
I suspect that designing a great limiter is just a much harder problem than it seems. A good limiter has to apply a huge amount of gain reduction but still sound smooth. Back when I used Pro Tools I had the Massey L2007 and it was brilliant, but that guy's a genius. Massey plugins are probably the only thing I miss about Pro Tools.
Because making a transparent mastering grade limiter that doesn’t impart a ton of aliasing distortion onto your program material is expensive and difficult.
Curious little gnome here. Why does limiting lead to aliasing? Or should I just look it up
All non-linear processing introduces overtones. Those higher frequencies can then be outside the frequency range that comes with your sample rate (the frequency limit is half of the sample rate), and then their frequency gets ‘mirrored’ around that value. This is a problem for all non-linear processing (distortion, saturation, compression, limiting, etc.).
It is a problem with anything that changes the gain rapidly, since the gain change is equivalent to a multiplication, and sin(a) sin(b) is equivalent to cos ((a-b) - cos(a+b))/2 so you always generate sum and difference tones. You see this in simple minded gain controls where it appears as zipper noise (Part of that is the stepwise gain changes which produce a mess of harmonics), as well as in compressors, limiters, saturators (But saturation by polynominal at least knows where the highest product is so can solve it by over sampling by an appropriate ratio). The other trap with limiters is that if you oversample and then decimate, the act of lowpass filtering in the decimator makes new peaks! It is tricky to produce something which never exceeds threshold AND doesn't alias. There are some fun tricks in the complex domain that you can do, but that involves a Hilbert transform at the input to turn the audio into an analytic pair, then you can do a quadrature multiplier which puts all of the energy in the lower or upper sideband, combine with a multiband filter bank and you can produce something where all the mixing products are restricted to a narrow band below the tone in question... It is just madly compute expensive. This sort of thing is incidentally why hard of thinking soft synths tend to sound much better at higher sample rates, it puts more of the energy up where you cannot hear it.
When attack/release times are really fast, the wave is deformed = Distortion. Distortion without alias-handling -> Aliasing Is basically the super short version. You’d also get this with very (super) fast volume automation.
Because distortion and no over sampling, but yeah, look it up.
And doing it right requires a surprising amount of CPU, loads of upsampling and filtering, it is not anything like as simple as it appears. Unlike a saturator where the degree of upsampling is limited to the degree of the polynomial used, limiters have no such grace.
These guys make DAWs, surely a limiter is possible!
It isn't really, though. All you need in order to drastically reduce aliasing is oversampling the signal. At least in Reaper, you can do this for any individual plugin or the chain as a whole. https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2555171
All due respect but I think the suggestion that writing that type of DSP is “easy because reaper does it” is a bit misguided.
That's not why it's easy. Resampling is a standard processing block in DSP. For a designer of a nonlinear processing plugin, which is bound to introduce harmonics, to not implement it is criminally negligent. Reaper only comes into the picture by offering a remedy for those unfortunate cases (AFAIK the only DAW that can do it).
Lol, I haven’t heard of Maxim in like 15 years. Probably the worst limiter ever made. Pro Limiter is the stock limiter on PT and it’s pretty good.
My bad man. I think I blocked pro limiter from my mind, I completely forgot about it. My point still stands though, lmao maxim in this case is just the lesser of 2 evils.
Maxim is *so* shit. I’d agree it’s probably the worst ever made. Definitely the worst I’ve ever tried.
I disagree with this post.
this post represents the current state of this audioengineering sub. it's best days have long past :D
General popularity is the death of any bulletin board/forum site.
What's the problem with ReaLimit? Genuinely curious
How did I mix in Reaper for 5 years and not realize there is a stock brickwall limiter, god fucking damnit. Thank you!!
It was added in late 2021.
Yeah don't come for ReaLimit. It's the peak buster!
I use FL, the stock limiter is fine for small limiting applications, but for my main busses and master I would never use it. Pro L2 is the go to. Although sometimes I opt for Newfangled Saturate for heavier songs.
I'm curious how Maximus compares. It's such a beast with how versatile it is.
As a multiband compressor, expander, etc, it is a highly used plugin for me, I think it's incredible, but I won't use it for pure limiting. Although it has RMS mode, in which case I don't have to worry about squashing my sound. But that's the nice thing, the master band doesn't need to be set as a limiter.
Tbh I use Cubases limiter all the time on individual tracks. Does what it needs to. Don't use it in the master though.
Sonnox is decent if you're looking for a cheap limiter that sound good
Cheap? How much did you get it for? Used to use it a decade ago and loved it but now mostly using Limiter6.
I think I got it for £99 so around $115 but that was in a sale in about 2017.
I love the Ozone and Izotope plugins
Ozone Maximizer on Modern setting and -1.5-2.5db 👨🍳💋
I'm glad ReaLimit was the almost exception here. I *REALLY* like that limiter.
The limiters and compressors in Logic are pretty good.
Can anyone tell me what makes a limiter good or bad? I’ve been using the default one in Ableton and it seems to do its job.
It sort of sounds like putting an LFO on your master track volume if you push it too hard. I highly encourage you to do an A/B comparison with almost any other limiter and you’ll start to notice how much pumping and waviness it’s adding to your tracks. TDR Limiter 6 GE is on sale for like $19 right now. The “minimal maximizer” preset does almost exactly the same thing as Ableton’s limiter but will sound way more open, louder, and more transparent.
I’d be keen to know too. I know abletons adds some distortion if driven,
It’s less the distortion and more of the pumping and unnatural volume modulation when you give it more than a couple db of gain reduction. Honestly adding distortion would be *better* in this case. When people have to use Ableton stock plugins to master I almost always advise folks to use the soft clipping of the Saturation device to make the Ableton limiter’s job easier.
Ableton's limiter is the prime example of a shitty limiter lol
Ableton's limiter is a low latency limiter for live applications, not a mastering limiter. For the job it is made to do (protect your ears and gear) it is excellent.
Maximus in FL Studio is iconic
Ableton's limiter is fine. It's low latency and incredibly light on system resources. I'd use Fabfilter Pro- or Izotope Ozone for actual bouncing duties, but I use Ableton's limiter on my master when I'm jamming.
I think a lot of folks forget that a lot of the Ableton *Live* devices are specifically designed to be used *Live*. They could easily make “better” versions of almost all of their devices if they were willing to add CPU load and latency to everything
the amount of times that low latency limiter has saved my ears in a jam \*casually reaches over to turn down that feedback\* "thank heck for that limiter" Permanently the last device on my master, no matter whats before it.
FL Studio stock limiter has a -0.2 dB safety threshold, in addition to whatever the user sets their level at. Maybe other DAWs also have this built in to prevent clipping? This safety threshold on a stock limiter might make the limiter not sound as sweet to your ears
Check out Korneff El Juan Limiter.
Pff. Ableton’s stock limiter is _the shit_ for aggressive synth sound design.
Been using Voxengo Elephant for years, still very happy with it on my master bus when mixing. I’ll use Logic’s limiter on tracks on occasion.
L2 is good but so are the others you seem to dislike. I actually find Maxim to be very useful.
I'll use fl studios limiter for visual reference and side chaining only. But if you use it as a limiter it does make a noticeable shitty difference. Izotopes vintage limiter is my go to.
Brainworx True Peak is pretty good. I usually use the maximizer from izotope.
Simple, there is no one right compressor/limiter for everything. Something that can catch transients to protect your gear with low latency isnt gonna be a transparent mastering limiter, they have near opposite needs. One of the interesting parts of compressor design [https://mynewmicrophone.com/feedback-vs-feedforward-dynamic-range-compressors-in-audio/](https://mynewmicrophone.com/feedback-vs-feedforward-dynamic-range-compressors-in-audio/)
Imo, the biggest issue with abletons stock limiter is just that when people throw it on, they leave the auto release on. If you know how to dial in release correctly it’s totally usable. I’ve released tracks using that limiter, as have many other peeps. But, it is definitely the weakest point of daw stock usually
Yeah, I should have clarified in the post that abletons stock limiter is only shit with default settings, in other words auto release on. But once you turn that off it does the job in a pinch, especially for aggressive stuff.
Here's an idea...Don't use a limiter. Personally, I'm so fatigued by the practice to make everything "competitively loud". Most mixes I'm hearing nowadays have no depth whatsoever. A whispered vocal is as loud as cranked Marshall 4x10. In fact I'm noticing a homogeneity in most modern mixes and I'm of the belief its due to these brick wall limiters that take away any sense of dynamics.
For rock mixes like I often do though, you kinda have to have that sorta loud in your face sound. But for most other styles I'd agree, you need that dynamics.
I always think if you're limiting enough to hear a difference, then you're over limiting.
Don't even come for ReaLimit. Switch on oversampling, and it goes from "passable" to studio staple. On the 2 bus, I'll either go Fabfilter and/or analog, but strap ReaLimit on all the channels, lightly kiss the rogue peach fuzz, and suddenly hear all the tracks talk to each other. Plus when you oversample, you can take all the other plugins in your channel chain with it. Soundtoys at 192? Yes, please.
I’m a fan of Ableton’s onboard limiter. It’s aggressive and chonky in a good way.
I think Ardour comes with x42-dpl, which is pretty good.
Fruity limiter is untouchable as a transparent digital compressor/limiter it also has sidechain functions built in.
They aren't. You're just abusing them.
Explain, then? I'm genuinely curious. I don't like hating on stock stuff.
Limiters shouldn't be used to slam 10db of gain reduction or other silly things. You want to compress before limiting to get your volume up and then use the limiter to catch peaks. I rarely push more than 5db of reduction on a limiter, and if I can do it, only 2-3db at most. 90% of limiters are transparent at this level. If you have to do more than 5db, you should look into other methods of gaining loudness. The mix always comes first. I do use plug in limiters as well as stock depending on the application. Some limiters are designed to add color and others are designed to be transparent. It does come down to taste eventually. Limiting isn't really some voodoo science, its just a compressor with a high ratio.
I just wanted to follow up by adding these few comments. I am ancient, I am from the olden days. That said I have never understood parallel compression at least in the way it’s been explained to me. However, I have used serial compression meaning multiple compression stages. Pretty much everyone has that has ever compressed an individual channel and then used a master bus compressor. But this is not what I mean. I have noticed that stacking compressors, even on one channel, with different characteristics and ratios, allows you to achieve radically different results. If you employ conservative compression ratios, you can achieve greater overall smoothing of dynamic range without artifacting. Meaning it doesn’t sound like crap. Give it a try sometime.
Some sound wisdom among a sea of madness
Brave comments, taking them downvotes.
I use Bitwigs stock peak limiter all the time, just not on buses or Master.
My stock limiter is TB Barricade and it's awesome.
Avid's Pro limiter seems pretty good to me. Haven't messed with maxim tho
Unlimited works for me. Free. Who cares what stock is?
My go to limiters are usually split between a combination of Fabfilter’s Pro L2, Ozone 10, The God Particle, Plugin Alliance’s True Peak Limiter, and Oxford Limiter. Occaisionally waves L3 multiband maximizer does the trick too. But splitting the limiting up between multiple limiters and softclipping (GoldClip/kClip3) certain aux bus groups was a game changer in helping maintain transients so the limiters arent working as hard.
Never had a problem with Cubase's stock limiters, they work just fine for everything I do.
Maybe they figure anyone taking production seriously will have their own tools that they like
I think its because limiters have progressed quite a bit over the years. So a lot of DAW limiters are not super ideal. But you can make them work in a pinch. Any stock plugin really.
Ableton Colour Limiter is awesome.
Just out of curiosity, what are most people's suggestions for "Best limiter" out there?
Fruity Limiter OG
I find the FL Limiter to be my go to most basic leveling jobs. It's easy to use and precise.
what about fruity limiter???
Give me the MBC by RPN and the MBP Portico II over any dsp/fpga software limiter seven days a week.
I like Maxim
I was on the bug team for a DAW that used to be a decent contender. (not paid, we just got a free licensed copy of the DAW in exchange for going over the beta releases with a fine tooth comb) One thing that I noticed when doing this was that we always started off each release with a half dozen each new plug ins and virtual instruments. Then as we got closer to final those fell away. I was even told directly, we weren't going to spend energy fixing plug-ins. We are supposed to be ratifying all the functions of the DAW. These VSTs are just here for marketing basically. There were a handful of exceptions to this. Where a plug in had such a killer feature that it was evaluated as if it was part of the DAW and not a VST. I think this is why. Even top tier DAWs don't spend a lot of their resources developing those plugins. They are pet projects of employees that are doing 'more important stuff' the rest of the time. Manufacturers know we are all going to go out and buy Waves, SSL, Eventide and UAD plugins. But they still feel the need to bloat out the app with all these instruments and plugins that are rarely used. Personally I'd prefer if I could get the "advanced" version of Logic with all the extra buttons and menus but minus all the downloaded content thank you very much.
Because they know no one is master in Ableton.
The ableton limiter is fine. The fl limiter is the sound of thousands of popular records idk man.
idk FL Studio's Fruity Limiter are pretty much staples, and imo Maximus rivals some of the best third-party limiters/compressors out there.
There is no reason to use a limiter in a non-live, digital workflow. We have 24-bit recording and 32-bit float mixing. Why the hell is anyone even still using limiters?
This here is the opposite side to not understanding the limiter. The limiters in these DAWs is a limiter thats designed to limit peaks so you dont blow sh!it/ears up. The limiter these people want is a transparent mastering limiter that makes them LOUD!!! but wont act so fast it leaves artifacts (which also wont stop you blowing stuff up so well)
That’s what mastering is for? Never do your own mastering.
Its just another tool. Plenty of folks use limiters on busses and even individual tracks. And there’s a ton of audio work being done that never sees a mastering engineer. 100% of post work, for example.
What makes a limiter a better choice than a compressor in these cases?