Distortion with Hard Limiting

M

mercitron

New member
When I raise the volume through hard limiting more than 4 or 5 decibals I find that the high ends (specifically cymbal crashes) begin to distort. Also, in some cases the extreme low end (i.e. kick drum) distorts. I've tried compressing the track before hard limiting, as well as hard limiting multiple times with a small (1 or 2 db) boost each time. Sometimes these work, sometimes not. I also wonder if it is related to the quickness of these attacks, and not their frequency range... I've messed around with release time a little, but that doesn't make much of a difference.

Any ideas, suggestions?
 
maybe hard limiting is not what you should be doing to get the sound you want. Are you hard limiting just to raise the volume of the track? What are you trying to achieve by hard limiting?
 
mercitron said:
Yeah, I'm trying to raise the overall volume of the track, and get all our tracks to the same volume.
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then just raise the volume of the track. maybe use some light compression to take care of any spikes. Lets say you want to raise the volume of track 1...To the left of the track (in the track properties), you will see several buttons. A record button (with a red R), Mute button (with a green M) and the solo button (yellow S). just below those buttons, you will see a P which stands for Pan and a V which is the volume. right click on the P if you want to pan, right click on the V if you want to change the volume...and so on for each track.
 
Oh, looking back I see that I was extremely unclear in my first post, but I'm talking about my final mixdown here. I've mixed everything down somewhat to my liking and now I'm trying to raise the overall volume w/out clipping.

Thanks for your help.
 
I still think that if that is the case...you just simply need to raise the volume of the track rather than hard limit. try going Effects > amplitude > amplify/fade and just do a simple boost of 2 or 3 db's or however far you need it. then, if you have any spikes, use a little compression to handle that. Hard limiting the entire track is going to change your mix.

If you are interrested...post the track and maybe we can help you with it.
 
mercitron said:
Oh, looking back I see that I was extremely unclear in my first post, but I'm talking about my final mixdown here. I've mixed everything down somewhat to my liking and now I'm trying to raise the overall volume w/out clipping.

Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...
Have you tried the parametric EQ with increasing the gain?

You can increase the gain while still maintain control over your frequencies... give it a shot.
 
mercitron said:
When I raise the volume through hard limiting more than 4 or 5 decibals I find that the high ends (specifically cymbal crashes) begin to distort. Also, in some cases the extreme low end (i.e. kick drum) distorts. I've tried compressing the track before hard limiting, as well as hard limiting multiple times with a small (1 or 2 db) boost each time. Sometimes these work, sometimes not. I also wonder if it is related to the quickness of these attacks, and not their frequency range... I've messed around with release time a little, but that doesn't make much of a difference.

Any ideas, suggestions?
Click to expand...

I'd be suprised if it didn't distort! that's what limiting does, you know.
 
To raise the volume, normalize the mix to 0db. If your getting some peaks well above the majority of the track, use hard limiting to tame the peaks before normalizing. If you don't hard limit first, then normalizing will only raise the volume until the loudest peaks reach 0db.

For example, your mix mostly peaks at -3 db with some stray peaks at 0db. Hard limit the mix to -3 db maybe even a little more. Now those peaks at 0db are at -3db. Now, normalize to desired level, for example, 0db. This will give you a louder mix.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
To raise the volume, normalize the mix to 0db. If your getting some peaks well above the majority of the track, use hard limiting to tame the peaks before normalizing. If you don't hard limit first, then normalizing will only raise the volume until the loudest peaks reach 0db.

For example, your mix mostly peaks at -3 db with some stray peaks at 0db. Hard limit the mix to -3 db maybe even a little more. Now those peaks at 0db are at -3db. Now, normalize to desired level, for example, 0db. This will give you a louder mix.
Click to expand...
Or you could simply Hard Limit to -0.1db with a gain of 2 or 3 db to increase the volume of the entire track while limiting the peaks to under 0db as well. :D
 
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