Hard limiting..Compressor

[DoubleNeck]

Hi all...new user here...and absolutely enjoying the C.E.P. 2.0 program...My question may be silly to some, but to me it's not...what does the "hard limiting" effect actually do? And what is a good setting for it... if it is a compressor type effect? and... I've been looking for the compressor on C.E.P. 2.0 and can't find it in any effects group. If anyone could help me with these two questions I would greatly appreciate it. Secondly; It seems when I bounce 2 tracks to one track... I can't use the original two tracks anymore...even after deleting the old tracks I get a "clip" and a pop whenever I start to use the old tracks that I just bounced from...so... I've been muting them and not using any tracks that I've bounced from and it seems to fix the problem, but it's terribly annoying to have 15 tracks spread out over 25 tracks lol if you know what I mean...

Comp info
celeron 500 mhz
13 gb hd
192 ram

[chrisharris]

Originally Posted by DoubleNeck

what does the "hard limiting" effect actually do? And what is a good setting for it... if it is a compressor type effect? and... I've been looking for the compressor on C.E.P. 2.0 and can't find it in any effects group.

Yes, hard Limiting is a type of compression. It's just a compressor with super fast attack and release settings, which is a topic for about a 12 page paper. For now, think of it like telling the software "Turn up the music Xdb, but don't let anything go over 0db." So if nothing in your song was louder than -8db, and you "limited" the file with an output of 7db, then it actually wouldn't "limit" anything, b/c nothing would go over 0db by turning up the file 7db. However, if you tell it to turn up the file by 7db, and parts of your file are at, say -5db, then it will turn up those parts as much as possible before "limiting" them at 0db. In effect, it'll kinda' chop off the top of the wave form at 0db so that it won't clip. I don't use CEP's limiter anymore, b/c I use a plugin from WAVES (L2), but I used CEP's for quite awhile, and it's really not too shabby.

As for what settings to use on the limiter, it totally depends on how loud your file is before you limit it. I like to just kinda' eyball it to start with, and (ignoring spikes), if it just LOOKS like most of it is around -10db, then I'll use an output setting of 10db to push most of it up to 0db. THIS IS JUST A ROUGH STARTING POINT...BE SURE TO LISTEN TO HOW IT SOUNDS AND COMPARE IT WITH OTHER MIXES THAT YOU LIKE.

The hard limiter is located under "Effects >> Amplitude >> Hard Limiting

The "normal" compressor is located under "Effects >> Amplitude >> Dynamics Processing.

Like any compression, don't overdo limiting, b/c if you do, it can distort the file...and even if it doesn't distort, you really shouldn't push the crap out of it because it'll kill the dynamics of your tune.

Originally Posted by DoubleNeck

Secondly; It seems when I bounce 2 tracks to one track... I can't use the original two tracks anymore...even after deleting the old tracks I get a "clip" and a pop whenever I start to use the old tracks that I just bounced from...so... I've been muting them and not using any tracks that I've bounced from and it seems to fix the problem, but it's terribly annoying to have 15 tracks spread out over 25 tracks lol if you know what I mean...

That's not normal, obviously - and I've never run across it. My only suggestion would be that after you delete the old takes, immediately go to the "File" tab in the multitrack session and select "close all nonsession waveforms" and when it asks you if you want to save them, hit "no to all." THEN SAVE THE SESSION. Once you've saved the session, close out the program totally and restart it...there's no way that it'll be trying to play those old tracks anymore, b/c they'll be gone.

As for why it does this? I have no idea, but your computer's really not up to par for the software...I always had a lot more problems before I got a new box.

Good luck.
Chris

[DoubleNeck]

Thanks guys for answering my questions... and I am getting a better pc to run C.E.P.2.0 as I've noticed some crashing and track slippage...after the pc crashes ..my tracks don't sync up anymore and I have to edit microseconds out of them to re-allign them...so I appreciate your help
DoubleNeck