what's the best mastering plug-in limiter in 2014?

B

Btyre2013

New member
Hi, I've been researching what plug-in limiter to buy because I need a very high quality and transparent sounding one.

My main ones of interest are the Fabfilter Pro-L and Voxengo Elephant, I'm not a professional ME but would really appreciate a mastering engineers opinion on this subject. I produce mostly classical guitar music so transparency is very important and very minimal limiting is what I'm trying to achieve, I would like to reduce the dynamic range to K-14 without noticable artifacts! would it be a better idea to master a classical guitar album to the K-20 standard? and also is the -23LUFS too quiet for this style? my system has a lot of volume and headroom so I don't always get it loud enough, and it's hard to tell if it's way too quiet or 'just right' because I've not done this before and have lack of experience.

regards,

Ben.
 
Getting the obligatory "Volume is the easy part - and the least important part of the process" thing out of the way...

K14 on solo classical guitar is probably going to sound like crap no matter what limiter you're using. Or at least, "too loud" by comparison.

That all said - Elephant isn't a bad place to be. Lots of tweakability under the hood.
 
I like the limiter in Ozone. Don't laugh, it is very simple and very good. Plus it has a dithering module.

What is this K-14/K-20 thing??
 
I'm not by any means an ME........but Tone Boosters makes an excellent and very transparent Limiter with dithering.
 
Btyre2013 said:
Hi, I've been researching what plug-in limiter to buy because I need a very high quality and transparent sounding one.

My main ones of interest are the Fabfilter Pro-L and Voxengo Elephant,
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Either of these is good, as is the Ozone 5 limiter. Pick your poison ; ) I like Pro L
L2 is a little old skool, but could work too, but ime, isn't as transparent as the limiters mentioned above.

Btyre2013 said:
I'm not a professional ME but would really appreciate a mastering engineers opinion on this subject. I produce mostly classical guitar music so transparency is very important and very minimal limiting is what I'm trying to achieve, I would like to reduce the dynamic range to K-14 without noticable artifacts! would it be a better idea to master a classical guitar album to the K-20 standard? and also is the -23LUFS too quiet for this style? my system has a lot of volume and headroom so I don't always get it loud enough, and it's hard to tell if it's way too quiet or 'just right' because I've not done this before and have lack of experience.

regards,

Ben.
Click to expand...
If the material is too dynamic, it might help, and I'll often write in volume automation to bring the real quite parts up a bit to where it sounds natural. I don't know about K stuff but would just a/b against something you like that's similar in style and genre and get in the ballpark.. GL
 
forgot to add that I'll be using Wavelab 8 for my DAW, so dithering isn't an issue (I'm happy with mbit+) but thanks for all the responses, I'll stick to the K-20 system then. I can download the elephant trial and see how it compares to the FF Pro L, I've already tried waves L1, L2 and L3 but didn't like any of them. I've got less than 24 hours hours before the Fabfilter deal ends which is also why I was asking, it's a good price at the moment.

Here's more info on the K-system for chili K-system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Massive Master said:
Getting the obligatory "Volume is the easy part - and the least important part of the process" thing out of the way...

K14 on solo classical guitar is probably going to sound like crap no matter what limiter you're using. Or at least, "too loud" by comparison.

That all said - Elephant isn't a bad place to be. Lots of tweakability under the hood.
Click to expand...

I wont be doing it to K-14 now, do you think K-20 would get me in the right ballpark? also is EBU-R128 -23LUFS too quiet for music? sorry for all the technical questions
 
Waltz Mastering said:
Either of these is good, as is the Ozone 5 limiter. Pick your poison ; ) I like Pro L
L2 is a little old skool, but could work too, but ime, isn't as transparent as the limiters mentioned above.

If the material is too dynamic, it might help, and I'll often write in volume automation to bring the real quite parts up a bit to where it sounds natural. I don't know about K stuff but would just a/b against something you like that's similar in style and genre and get in the ballpark.. GL
Click to expand...

Hi, I really wish Wavelab would do automation! thanks for your stellar advice though, I could use Cubase though, so might do it that way, it's only on a few tracks from the album with much higher crest factors than some of the others, I'm really starting to appreciate how hard it is to master an album though...
 
Chili said:
I like the limiter in Ozone. Don't laugh, it is very simple and very good. Plus it has a dithering module.

What is this K-14/K-20 thing??
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It's basically a standard for dynamic range or crest factor of a recording. I haven't read the specs, and I think there's some weighting involved in the process, but basically the number tells you the difference between the loudest peak and the RMS average. I'm thinking even 20 is too small for good solo classical. Isn't the K-24 supposed to be something like a standard for classical broadcast? And even that is squeezing things a bit.

I very much doubt that you will get solo classical guitar (broad generalization, though) to K-20 without destroying it, and you definitely can't do it with limiting alone. You will definitely also need volume automation and/or compression unless you're really willing to compromise your playing technique to remove all of the dynamics that you have (hopefully) worked so hard to develop.
 
Btyre2013 said:
I wont be doing it to K-14 now, do you think K-20 would get me in the right ballpark? also is EBU-R128 -23LUFS too quiet for music? sorry for all the technical questions
Click to expand...
I think you should calibrate your monitoring chain and stop watching meters. You'll thank me later...
 
Btyre2013 said:
Hi, I really wish Wavelab would do automation! thanks for your stellar advice though, I could use Cubase though, so might do it that way, it's only on a few tracks from the album with much higher crest factors than some of the others, I'm really starting to appreciate how hard it is to master an album though...
Click to expand...

Wavelab has volume handles that you can use to automate the volume of parts of the song. You absolutely can do that in wavelab.
 
antichef said:
Hope you got Pro-L during the sale - it has been great for me (and I got it before the sale :( )
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after countless blind testing I ended up prefering voxengo elephant just a bit more, I haven't bought it yet but that's the one I'll be getting. They are very very close though
 
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