Limiting Edits Of Pre-Mastered Songs - How Should I Do It?

[daws]

I am a DJ and I do my own edits of tracks so I can play them in the club.

I usually rip my CDs - as 16bit/44.1khz WAVs or 320kb/s MP3s.

After that I bring them into Ableton Live and add 8 bar intros.

I notice that the meters go into the red even though I haven't added any gain.

I turn my tracks down by -12dB to avoid clipping, then throw on a limiter with 12dB input.

I have experimented with various limiters such as Pro-L, MPL1, Sonnox Limiter, and the Ableton limiter, but I only get good results half of the time.

I understand the basics of a limiter, and most of the common functions and parameters found on a limiter, but I am having problems getting it "perfect".

What I want to do is add 8 bar intros to my tracks and preserve the levels and dynamics.

What is the best way to achieve this in the box without normalizing or messing up the dynamics?

I have the waves limiters, RNDigital bundle, UAD-1 and a few others, but am open to trying demos and purchasing other software.

 

[Grahamrunsran]

You might consider not even using a limiter, many mastering engineers output files that peak at 0db, which is actually clipping. What I would do is turn your fader down to -.1 and leave it alone, you'll preserve the dynamics and loudness of the songs and maybe even correct a mistake the mastering engineer made.

 

[witzendoz]

I have had this problem when ripping tracks for editing a pre recorded radio show. Some CD's go into the red the whole time. What I do is to use a limiter but have the input side at 0 and the output set to -0.3dB, that way the only tracks effected are the ones over into the red, and the small amount of limiting is not noticeable. You could leave this limiter on your output bus all the time and the tracks that are not hitting red won't be effected.

Alan.

 

[Bobbsy]

The data on a CD is 16bit/44.1/stereo and, using a ripper all it's doing is copying the tracks with no processing. Therefore, any clipping you see is mastered that way on the CD. Alas, such thing's are all too common the the loudness wars.

This also means that you won't gain anything by lowering levels to -12 and limiting etc. The CD tracks will already be hard limited and compressed to within an inch of their lives and any clipped samples will remain clipped whatever the level. Frankly, you might as well just normalise downwards a few tenths of a dB. This'll get rid of the worrying red on your meters but leave you with tracks that match any commercial stuff you play.

The situation is a bit more tricky with MP3 since some codecs can vary the level slightly. I have to set a maximum level of -0.3dBFS in wave format to be sure I won't get occasional clipped samples when I convert to MP3.

However, if you're doing the editing you describe, MP3 is a bad idea. Ableton works natively in wave for the editing process then you have to re-encode it to MP3 when you save. Even at high bit rates, the compression artefacts are cumulative so you'll lower quality each time to open the file, process it and resave. I'd suggest sticking to wave for any editing and only converting to MP3 (if you must) when you know you're finished with all processing and editing.