Limiters are, in my opinion, one of the most important plugins you can own. I don't feel bad about spending a lot of time testing & comparing them because cleanly shaving off peaks whilst also not creating distasteful distortion is important to me, as well as streaming platforms lowering the entire volume if you peak too high. As such, I've tried a lot, and I thought I'd share my experiences with the forum & would also like to hear other people's opinions. This is a bit of a "review" of the ones I've tried the most, but not all!

Keep in mind I deal with bass-heavy content such as EDM so what sounds good for that might not be as good for other types of material.

Also, this is of course just my opinion. Trust that anything I say here is with the best of intentions and not for the purpose of sparking a flame war ;)

Fabfilter Pro-L 2
My experiences with this limiter aren't as positive as other's. Whilst I believe Fabfilter makes great program-dependent plugins, their limiters don't work well in my experience. It's either squashing a transient hard or creating noticeable digital distortion with low lookaheads. There's too many different styles that make you go through them one by one, trying to find one that doesn't sound bad whilst also adjusting the lookahead/attack/release to compensate since they change slightly based on the mode. The CPU usage is quite low, but it doesn't make up for what I consider a subpar limiter. That being said, it does work well as a "set and forget" limiter on the "safe" mode in which it ruins the peaks of a signal but ensures no distortion.

iZotope Maximizer
Maximizer is a nicer version of Pro-L to my ears. A much simpler & faster workflow, the attack/release being integrated into 1 slider works very well imo. When not pressing it hard, I think the IRC IV is the most transparent sounding limiter period. (Spoiler: Even moreso than DMG Limitless!)
That being said, the CPU & latency are so immense with IRC IV it stretches the definition of a "realtime" plugin.
When I used this plugin for mastering I generally set it at IRC LL at ~4 character and it handled most anything I threw at it. Very solid limiter, however, one limiter has surpassed this for me. And that is...

Potentially has aliasing due to a lack of oversampling.

DMG Limitless
I consider this the "holy grail" of brickwall limiters at this point. The program dependency is great, the sound is great & the CPU usage & latency are all very low considering what it does. It's a more practical version of iZotope's IRC IV. Instead of spectral limiting, it's "just" a 6 band limiter but works better when pushed hard. Whilst spectral limiting intensely recolors/re-EQs the track when pushed hard, DMG Limitless has a "band linking" option which slightly effects the dynamics of all the bands, the further away from the peak the less. This still recolors/re-EQs the signal slightly, but damned if I can notice it, & it significantly improves transparency in the low end. It's masterfully done, and is, imo, DMGAudio's best work. Oh, and there's a great soft clipper to boot.

TBProAudio LAxLimit
Aggressive, dirty & sounds great. Sometimes it goes over the normal ceiling, let alone true peak ceiling. If you want aggressive limiting with low latency/cpu, this works wonders. It can be decently tame as well with enough fiddling of course, but where's the fun in that ;)

FIRComp 2
One of the niftiest little plugins you can own. Works as a clean compressor, limiter & great for sidechaining. Has extremely low harmonic generation & lookahead reduces that even further. The lookahead & program dependency are extremely well implemented. Uses no more CPU than a standard digital compressor. #1 pick for CPU-restricted people.

TC Electronic Brickwall HD
Low CPU & latency with true peak limiting. VERY nice metering & a very fast workflow. Transients are pristine...however the release stage is extremely weird. It's like it's 2 stages of inverse logarithmic releases that makes it sound distinct but a tad odd.

Potentially has aliasing due to a lack of oversampling.

TDR Limiter 6
More than just a limiter, many have this as their favorite limiter due to its versatility. Like all TDR products, it's very high quality. But it really pushes my CPU, and I personally don't often find myself needing its extra features. Great sound, but not for me.
Edit: After re-evaluation, this does seem to produce more distortion than I remember, even at max lookahead & highest quality processing. Perhaps its other modules are better...

UrsaDSP Boost
I've heard nothing but praise for this limiter, and I can see why. It offers a different type of limiting with various ways to shape the final sound that I feel work very well as a mastering plugin. The emphasis/punch sounds great & the focus works as it should. Unfortunately I can't say I like how the actual limiting sounds. As the tooltips/manual says, you have to increase the lookahead times to very high amounts to not distort the low end, and at that point it squashes the transients too much for my taste. This can of course be partially mitigated by increasing the "punch", but it doesn't sound as good to me as a limiting algorithm which handled transients correctly at its core. That being said, I use it as a special FX from time to time since nothing sounds quite like it. A recommend even if I don't typically like it as a mastering limiter
Oh, it also has by far the least amount of harmonic generation of any limiter. If you want your music to be "mathematically correct" then this is for you I guess :P

Voxengo Elephant
One of the most configurable limiters available, I'm sure you can get this to sound great on any track.
The results sound pristine on more modern algorithms, but for me it took a lot of trial & error to find what I like & the older algorithms don't yield as nice of results. My favorite algorithm is "EL-C" with transient shaping on the "classic" mode which produces little harmonics yet preserves transients very well. If you like configurability this is a great choice.

Something of note is that, when configured to intentionally sound distorted, the distortion sounds extremely unique. Seems to really prevent generating high end harmonics...sounds nicer than other limiter distortion to me!

Boz Digital The Wall
Simplifying a limiter done wrong. There's really only a 20% area of the "flavor" slider that yields transparent results while the rest distorts the signal extremely hard. The "aggressive" threshold just makes this sound no better than a hard clipper.
That being said, in that 20% range you get an "ok" limiter.

A.O.M Invisible Limiter
I don't like being overly negative to any plugin, so I'll just say this isn't for me/this type of music. Lots of distortion in the low end region regardless of the version, but I think the original one distorts the least out of all of them...? Adjusting the release curves is a nice feature though.

Toneboosters Barricade
I remembered this being solid and still hold this feeling. I really like fully auto limiters, and this one does that very well, with the option to adjust things manually. Different auto modes provide actually audible differences so it's very nice to quickly dial-in a sound. I think people write this company off as a "budget Fabfilter" but personally I like their limiter more

Flux elixir & pure limiter
Very good limiters with excellent transparency. No audible pumping whatsoever, just an acceptable bit of squaring when pushed unreasonably. I believe this company holds a bit of prestige, and while I think their UIs are outdated for the most part, the sound is solid. I don't think many people use many Flux plugins nowadays though since there seems to be less expensive options with comparable, if not subjectively better results.

T-racks Stealth Limiter
Sounds slightly cleaner than AOM invisible limiter to me. I know this has a lot of fans, but to be honest to me it sounds pretty average. Perhaps my ears just suck and can't hear that "infrasonic" filter goodness, but I'm guessing it's just not designed for bass-heavy content. For the fairly large latency it has, it doesn't sound like it has a lot of lookahead. Not a bad/good thing, just something I noted.

T-racks Brickwall Limiter
To me it sounds most transparent with the advanced 3 & 4 options, moreso than Stealth Limiter. To my knowledge, brickwall limiter came first, then stealth limiter? I'm also assuming they added more algorithms in new updates, in which "adv 4" is the most recent. Never been a big t-racks guy, so let me know if this is the case. Either way I do like this limiter more than not.

NUGEN Audio ISL
It's aight
This has been my opinion of it throughout the years. You can really hear that release stage pumping...increasing the release time feels like it makes it way too sluggish way too quickly. Distortion is low but the transients aren't as impactful as I'd expect for a large amount of pumping & low lookahead.

RJS Pristine Peaks
Low distortion, good transient preservation & auto release, but the signal goes over the ceiling a good bit even when not pushed hard. Highpass filter increases latency by a ton since it's linear phase. This doesn't make sense to me since the main reason to use a highpass filter in a limiter, in my eyes, is to remove DC offset, which IIR does objectively better. A 1hz IIR highpass makes inaudible amount of phase shift & completely eliminates DC offset. It's not a big deal since you can just disable it I guess.

FREE:

W1 Limiter
Apparently an emulation/clone of a Waves limiter, this sounds fantastic. It seems to attempt to decrease the overall volume before limiting and does it very well. It takes a moment to calculate the appropriate pre-compression/gain reduction before limiting but afterwards it's very transparent.

Potentially has aliasing due to a lack of oversampling.

Maxwell Smart
Excellent transient preservation but generates a lot of harmonics. The harmonics sound great though, getting into "soft-clipper" territory but still not quite as harsh. I prefer it over W1 Limiter personally.

Potentially has aliasing due to a lack of oversampling.

Conclusion

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that DMG Limitless, Fircomp 2 & Voxengo Elephant are the top commercial limiters for EDM/sub-heavy content.

For free limiters, Maxwell Smart is great for keeping the punch of a kick/snare whilst W1 Limiter is a bit more tame.

I won't touch on dithering to keep this post from becoming a whole ass document. Also be careful of DC offset making peaks higher in dB than they actually are! Use a DC offset function in the limiter if it has one or make an IIR highpass at any frequency with an EQ to eliminate it before limiting.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 18, 2023

With such love for transients maybe not limiting at all is a better option.
Mean no offense by that.

 

That's odd.

Acon Digital Limiter it is then.
With 30ms lookahead there is 0 distortion from 5 to >22kHz in any configuration.


On the stereo out channel it is by the way more advisable to use a fullband limiter in a very technical way then to "create a certain sound"

 

That'd create hard clipping which sounds terrible imo. DMG Limitless, as well as other good limiters, keep the transient impact. Soft clipping is another option but sometimes the saturation isn't desired.

I have actually tried acon digital's limiter, but I can't remember much about it, which tells me I probably wasn't impressed with it enough to keep it around. Not that it means that it's bad

 

Agreed. My go-to Limiter is Voxengo's Elephant. It does a superb job of supplying different algorithms which I can always better mold to any material with all the behind-the-scenes knobs, and with crazy transparency.
As for some of the others on your list, I *want to put DMG Audio's Limitless in my favourites list, but I find it difficult to consider it a "Limiter" with all it's features, but as it *does limit, and it *is amazing overall, it makes my list (I'm not independently wealthy though, so I don't own it.) Limiter No.6 falls into that same category as Limitless, more so actually, since it's more of a suite than a Limiter, but it's golden as well; anything Tokyo Dawn Labs churns out is quality—'nuff said. As for UrsaDSP Boost, I honestly haven't spent as much time as I'd like testing it out, but it's definitely noteworthy for its unique options. The rest, I don't have much of an opinion on... no, not even Fabfilter's Pro-L; I've tested most of them, but they don't feel right for one reason or another, with Pro-L admittedly being the least offender in that sense. I like Elephant's algorithms and options, the latter which become more intuitive once you fiddle with them often enough, and I tend to stick with what works for me.
As an honorable mention, I have to add Brainworx' bx_limiter True Peak, which I've found can match up with two of Elephants algorithms when on the Classic setting (I forget which off the top of my head; I A/B-ed them when it first came out, but that was a couple years ago,) though I've never been able to match the Modern setting with Elephant, which does fit certain material better, even if it's much more heavy-handed, so it's in my arsenal now as well. I also own Mastering The Mix's Limiter, which isn't anything flashy, but is a solid tool.
I should add that I control my peaks at all points within a mix with a lite touch, so when I use a Limiter, it's for a track's final bump into completion, not as some tool to hunt down and bludgeon a swarm of errant peaks into submission—I add this because I've often seen people expect Limiters to perform feats that are nothing short of miraculous, and then complain about artifacts and distortion.

... ??? I'll assume you're joking.

 

Have you evaluated IK Stealth, ToneBoosters Barricade, or Sonible Smart Limit also? I try out others, but I usually end up back at Pro-L.

 

The one in Waves Maserati GRP on the master setting. My absolute secret weapon.

 

McDSP ML4000 on Smart Mode (not the multiband one). Since i consider i'm squashing my track if i'm taking more than 1,5 db, i think this was the smoothest one for the way i use limiters. Voxengo's Elephant is really good also, but very colorful IME.

 

I currently use 4 limiters:

1 - Limitless (creme de la creme of limiters)
2 - Boost (cleanest limiter I have ever used)
3 - Elephant (sounds especially good in heavy bass music)
4 - TrackLimit (mainly to mix)

I have other limiters here like Pro-L 2, Smart:limit, etc... but I almost never use them.

 

ReaLimit

 

Elephant tend to create "low mid" fatness, harmonics ...
It is the most "musical" AND effective limiter i tried.
But so, it is NOT "neutral"

It is still my fav limiter ever.

As far as "free and simple" : LoudMax
Clean, effective, basic ... i love it too

https://loudmax.blogspot.com/

 

The IK Stealth Limiter is an absolute beast. 3db Tight Mode 4x preset get me started and I tweak from there.

 

I like A.O.M. Invisible Limiter

 

I feel you, it *is colored... but it's not from the actual limiting... I don't think...? I don't know if that makes sense, but I don't hear the limiting coloring it when I'm *pushing it... it's hard to describe—clearly.

Just gotta be that too-cool-for-school outlier, don't'cha? Maybe I'll one-up you and claim I *strictly use Airwindows.

 

PRO-L2 vs Invisible Limiter G1

Dunno if subtitles will work, but he shows that L2 creates lots of harmonic distortion, and IL G1 creates none, as if there was implemented some algorythm preventing that.

He also states that Invisible Limitar is more similar to a very powerful compressor to him.

It's sad he didn't compare other popular limiters though

 

This is actually a fairly flawed test, due to what test "material" is being used.
When presented with a sustained tone that doesn't change its volume, a limiter has only two options:
1) Do its limiting job and act as a waveshaper, turning a sine into a square. Pro-L chooses to do this with every algorithm but "Safe".
2) Do absolutely bloody nothing. Pro-L's "Safe" and Invisible as a whole choose to do this.
This "test" is an impractical edge case, not something you'll ever do with a limiter. It doesn't show anything.

 

Why are people saying this? A limiter is a dynamic tool it changes the level.
4dB reduction (IIRC), still a sine wave -> limiter, shaped wave -> waveshaper:

Spoiler: See yourself

 

Um, because that's what compressors and limiters do under certain settings, especially with lower frequencies? Because even some fairly clever program dependency might end up in pushing the wave in into the ceiling when confronted with a sustained tone?
Anyways, how else are you supposed to limit a sine? As I said, there are two options: either turn it into a progressively squared shape or do nothing at all.

 

A limiter with a large lookahead window / pre-comp should be able to avoid most / all squaring. LoudMax uses 1.25ms plus 6 samples for true peak - still distorts quite a bit.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2023