Ah, so you've met ashcat.
Doubt about limiter and mastering tracks at home.
- Thread starter CMolena
- Start date
Ah, so you've met ashcat.
ashcat_lt
Well-known member
So stop thinking about it and try it! Long RMS, lookahead halfway in. Very low ratio, threshold so it's almost always doing just a little more than nothing. You won't hear it happening until you've gone too far, but the overall loudness will increase by a surprising amount.
Edit - BTW, you did ask me to elaborate. If nothing else you've learned that lesson.
ashcat_lt
Well-known member
This thread wasn't actually about RMS compression, but rather the exact opposite: peak limiting. But you know what's super funny? The best, most transparent peak limiters do exactly the same thing that I was talking about, only with much shorter times and much heavier ratios.
If you go through sample by sample, compare each to the threshold and if it's over turn it down some amount based on the ratio, you get distortion. This is what every saturator, clipper, overdrive pedal, and guitar amp does to get that sound. In a compressor or limiter when this happens, we call it "ripple distortion" because the signal in the detector path is not smooth, but "rippled" by the audio signal. We cure that by slowing down the detector. Most of the time, that's done with the attack and release controls. These are usually very much just low-pass filters on detector signal that take out those fast wiggles so that the gain adjustment happens more smoothly. RMS window does the same thing also. But it's a tough balancing act, especially at limiter-type ratios. You can only get so fast before it sounds like distortion, but if it's not fast enough you miss the quick transient peaks that you're trying to take.
Worse yet, you're still adjusting gain based on the average of the past however many ms. You're still turning down today's volume based on what it was yesterday. You're always going to miss the leading edge of a quick sudden spike. You're always trying to play catch up. This can actually make things much worse, as if the limiter kicks in hard in the middle of a quick spike, it basically makes that spike even quicker!
So a lot of the really aggressive brick wall limiters actually have a short RMS window and a lookahead halfway through that. They see the spike coming and start turning down a little early so that when it hits, it's already down as far as it needs to be. ReaComp can do this too.
Unfortunately, that style if limiting isn't super reliable. For a number of kind of weird mathematical reasons, it's difficult to predict exactly how much attenuation any given input will really get, so that even with infinite ratio, some peaks can still go over the threshold, so your ceiling isn't really a ceiling.
That's when you just stick a sample-for sample saturator/clipper whatever so that you know for absolutely sure where your loudest peak will be.
...until you turn on over sampling...
...or it hits the reconstruction filter on the way out the DAC...
If you go through sample by sample, compare each to the threshold and if it's over turn it down some amount based on the ratio, you get distortion. This is what every saturator, clipper, overdrive pedal, and guitar amp does to get that sound. In a compressor or limiter when this happens, we call it "ripple distortion" because the signal in the detector path is not smooth, but "rippled" by the audio signal. We cure that by slowing down the detector. Most of the time, that's done with the attack and release controls. These are usually very much just low-pass filters on detector signal that take out those fast wiggles so that the gain adjustment happens more smoothly. RMS window does the same thing also. But it's a tough balancing act, especially at limiter-type ratios. You can only get so fast before it sounds like distortion, but if it's not fast enough you miss the quick transient peaks that you're trying to take.
Worse yet, you're still adjusting gain based on the average of the past however many ms. You're still turning down today's volume based on what it was yesterday. You're always going to miss the leading edge of a quick sudden spike. You're always trying to play catch up. This can actually make things much worse, as if the limiter kicks in hard in the middle of a quick spike, it basically makes that spike even quicker!
So a lot of the really aggressive brick wall limiters actually have a short RMS window and a lookahead halfway through that. They see the spike coming and start turning down a little early so that when it hits, it's already down as far as it needs to be. ReaComp can do this too.
Unfortunately, that style if limiting isn't super reliable. For a number of kind of weird mathematical reasons, it's difficult to predict exactly how much attenuation any given input will really get, so that even with infinite ratio, some peaks can still go over the threshold, so your ceiling isn't really a ceiling.
That's when you just stick a sample-for sample saturator/clipper whatever so that you know for absolutely sure where your loudest peak will be.
...until you turn on over sampling...
...or it hits the reconstruction filter on the way out the DAC...
Yeah can definitely hear the difference. I use studio one also and always master mixes at home. Probably will never get that clean sheen of a professional sound , but happy enough saving the money. Ran into this same problem and finally figured out that there were too many instances of the effect in the same chain... Ie, record,mix, master all have the limiter , compression etc.. Friends were telling me the sounds were kind of dropping in and out., which sounds like your prob. As far as level go, i actually will go as far as to to distort the the sound and then back off until pleasant to my ears. And that is sometimes around + 3db. I grew up on analog
CMolena
Active member
Well, I finally figured out what to do to get the mixes louder without that annoying compression effect. I watched a video that Joe Gilder from Home Studio Corner made about using limiters and basically he raised the gain knob instead of the threshold. He raised it until he found a good volume level and then he just turned the threshold up a little bit for minimal compression. (He mastered in Studio One aswell).
Oh and may I say without discussing what is the correct way of measuring RMS levels and making me sound stupid because he knows everything that is there to know.
Oh and may I say without discussing what is the correct way of measuring RMS levels and making me sound stupid because he knows everything that is there to know.