Digital Limiting SUCKS

  • Thread starter Thread starter FALKEN
  • Start date Start date
LRosario said:
On a serious note:


Your best bet in a situation like this probably falls under the whole saying, "simple might as well be better".

The impression I get is that you want to try and smash everything as close to zero db as possible (correct me if I'm wrong). But rest assured, if that's the case, you're probably doing more than you need to.

You have to understand what limiters are and what they will do to your sound. It would be somewhat logical to think that by limiting everything up to a curtain point and then pushing up the make up gain, then you could expect just an increase in volume. That's true, partially.

You will boost up the volume, but at the same time you're althering the EQ of the sound because of the way frequencies react at different volumes. This is one of the things mastering engineers get heavy on.

If you truly want everything at a simliar level, pick your softest song and use that as a reference. Remember, not every song needs to be stupid loud. In fact, it would probably do better to have songs with different dynamic range...it makes for a more interesting experience. :D
Click to expand...

dude; i'm not slamming it. like I said, most of the material does not approach the threshold. I can't BELIEVE nobody else feels this way!
 
What you need to do is use some sort of a peak limiter like an L-1.
 
You need to use a plugin that was designed to do what you are doing. The normal compressor plugins set in limit mode just doesn't work. Try one of these:
Waves L2
Steinberg loudness maximizer
Sonic Timeworks mastering compressor
 
Farview said:
You need to use a plugin that was designed to do what you are doing. The normal compressor plugins set in limit mode just doesn't work. Try one of these:
Waves L2
Steinberg loudness maximizer
Sonic Timeworks mastering compressor
Click to expand...

I see.

anybody have any insight into the stereo limiting? I realize that running the limiter on both channels simultaneously may be responsible for some of the lost stereo image and quality, but wouldn't a mastering house run their limiter with the channels linked?

any comments on that one Bruce?
 
The channels have to be linked or else the image will colapse, or at least be very unstable. Even though everyone explains what a limiter is by saying it is a compressor with a high ratio and fast attack and release, mastering limiters are not that. They are purpose-built for mastering and do their job without mucking up the mix (or at least not as fast)
 
sorry to change the subject, but that levelizer plugin,i watched the videoclip n it looks like a great tool to have. it only appears to be available for the software "saw studio"? is this plugin available in other formats, dirext x maybe? so i can use it with my cubase projects? thanks if anyone has any info.

Steve
 
The Levelizer (100 dollars) is only available as a SAWStudio native plugin, so you would need at least SAWStudio Basic (300 dollars) to run it, you would also be able to use the built in channel 5 band parametric EQ's and compressors, and/or the SS native 7 band parametric EQ plugin that comes with SS.

Being a fully functional 24 track audio recording/editing/mixing platform, there is a lot more there of course, and there are demos for both available, which, like the actual program, have no invasive copy protection, dongles, or challenge/response authorization, actually, they do NOT touch the windows registry at all when installed, so un-installing them is as easy as just deleting the program folder.

To compare this to the native Waves stuff, the L1 is 300 dollars and the L3 is 600 dollars by themselves, and use Pace copy protection.
 
drummersteve said:
sorry to change the subject, but that levelizer plugin,i watched the videoclip n it looks like a great tool to have. it only appears to be available for the software "saw studio"? is this plugin available in other formats, dirext x maybe? so i can use it with my cubase projects? thanks if anyone has any info.

Steve
Click to expand...
Doesn't Cubase come with Peak Master? It is the same concept.
 
does anyone know of a really good limiting plugin which supports direct x? that levelizer looked a really neat way of raising the overall level of the mix. is there anything else available like that for cubase X or anything? i find my mixes with compression and limiting, without them sounding cack, still have many peaks which i cant get rid of. if anyone knows of available plugins please let me know!
 
haha sorry about that, i posted the same post retty much twice, i must have thought i dreamt posting the 1st one... apologies!

thanks for your help, ive not come across a peak master?... il have to check it out tho. im jus guna try a demo of this mastring compressor thing too. thanks guys!

Steve
 
FALKEN said:
dude; i'm not slamming it. like I said, most of the material does not approach the threshold. I can't BELIEVE nobody else feels this way!
Click to expand...


:D Alright, gotcha

Then I suppose you could benefit from some of the Waves plug-ins. Farview mentioned the L2, which is probably the next best thing to an actual outboard mastering compressor/limiter. A few good bucks, but a worthy investment.

If it's not clipping, then it might just be a matter of reEQing your final mixes so it won't sound so muddy. Don't worry about loud, cause loud dosn't mean better. In fact, you up the risk of ear fatigue, which means your listeners won't bother to hear it much if it's hard on the ears. Hence the reason I'd avoid limiters unless it's really needed.

That's my two cents, good luck on the project ;)
 
I've used the following software limiters enough to get some kind of a feel for how they sound.

Wavelab Peak Master
Cubase' built-in limiters
Dave Brown's dB Mastering Limiter
Digital Fishphone's Blockfish Limiter (freeware)
Izotope Ozone 3.0 Maximizer
Waves L2

I've used them only with stereo files and just to tame peaks with 2-3 dB of gain reduction at occasional points in the file.

To my ear, all of them except Blockfish and L2 cause the sound quality to change for the worse (veiled) just by passing the signal through the processor.

To my ear also, Blockfish is about 70% as transparent as L2 when they're actually reducing the gain. And I can push the L2 harder if I want without it distorting.

I've never had a problem with the stereo aspects being changed by the limiter though, unless I forget to take Blockfish out of its mono default setting.

Just my 2c,
Tim
 
Timothy Lawler said:
To my ear, all of them except Blockfish and L2 cause the sound quality to change for the worse (veiled) just by passing the signal through the processor.
Click to expand...

YESSSS!!!

now we're getting somewhere.


okay. so. say I have a song where 99% of the material is below -6, but it peaks way above say, 8 times. and say I have 6 of these songs. You say that you apply the limiter to only the parts that need it. Would you go through and do this 50 times??? and then normalize or something?
 
okay. so. say I have a song where 99% of the material is below -6, but it peaks way above say, 8 times. and say I have 6 of these songs. You say that you apply the limiter to only the parts that need it. Would you go through and do this 50 times??? and then normalize or something?
Click to expand...

What I mean is that I set the threshold of the limiter to catch peaks that only occur every few seconds at most, process the whole file, but don't knock down peaks more than 2-3 dB. You could certainly manually reduce the level of peaks in a file if you only had a few, and that would be cleaner still. More time consuming, though. If after reducing peaks manually you worked it so your peaks were at -.2 dB or so, you wouldn't need to normalize after. There wouldn't be anywhere for the normalizer to raise the gain to. Thinking of manual peak reduction, it just hit me me that since I use the L2 for dithering down from 24 bits, I'd run the file through it anyway even if only controling a couple of peaks. But the L2 really is pretty invisible to me.

Just my 2c,
Tim
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top