I thought I'd give my thoughts on this little beauty.

My go to limiter is Waves L3-LL Ultramaximizer followed by Fabfilter Pro-L. Between these two I was pretty happy with my limiters. Yesterday I decided to get Boz Digital's The Wall since it's on sale for $39 until 31 Oct. So I did a quick little shoot out between the L3 & The Wall.

Interestingly enough I tried using Voxengo's Elephant prior to this and it just didn't produce the same loudness that L3 had. Easily 2db difference so went with the L3

The song I am mastering is a deep house song featuring live guitars, jazz bass and killer vocals and the usual suspects. My general limiter settings are -0.1 ceiling and about 3 - 6db of gain reduction.

With the L3-LL Utramaximizer:
With the threshold at -12db giving up to -6db GR it really makes the song loud and adds some brightness to the song that no other limiter I've heard does. Also at this setting I'm really on the edge of causing pumping, which I've caught myself doing on occasion.

With The Wall:
I initially set it to the same -12db with x8 oversampling on the 'smooth' mode (green GUI) and low and behold it's not quite matching L3's loudness. Also, the brightness of the L3 is clearly missing. Playing with the 'flavour' slider changes mainly the release time of the limiter. I also notice that the GR is much snappier and grabs the transients very quickly but lets them go just as quickly. I notice I can bring the threshold down a lot more as well without over limiting. Switching to 'aggressive' mode (brown GUI) then adds some oomf. It becomes louder, the release time becomes even shorter and in this mode it clearly smashes L3 in loudness. I drop the threshold to about -15db and I cannot hear any pumping. The algorithm Boz use here manages to make super fast GR without it sounding shit. Granted the oversampling is helping out loads here. There's also the 'sanity check' button which loudness match your input gain to allow for easy bypassing. I do wish they added some peak GR text to the meter. You've got to really watch the meter to get a good indication of peak GR.

Thoughts:
I'm actually surprised how easy this plugin is to dial in. It's rather forgiving if you squash things a bit too much. It's sounds really good (to me but I am no expert). I love it's 2 overarching modes providing transparency (smooth) as well as character (aggressive) when needed. It's good looking with a really informative GUI similar to Pro-L. It's meter could be a little wider with GR text and is not as tweakable as Pro -L but it's simplicity is it's strength, and for it's current price... It's killer. I'll grab this first before I grab L3 or Pro-L

 

Thanks for the info. Personally, I don't like the Waves limiter and have used iZotope's Maximizer (part of Ozone) for many years. Boz has always been a clump of meh to me, but based on your post I'll give that one a shot if they have a demo available.

 

@DeepStar, have you tried NI's Stealth Limiter? Time and time again people claim it's the best limiter. Would you mind adding this limiter to your comparison roster? Appreciated.

 

How would you rate the wall to sonnox limiter ?

 

Ok sure let me have a go. I've never used it personally. I'll let you know
Edit: It's IK Multimedia, not NI. I was wondering why I had never heard of NI's stealth Limiter.

I don't own any Sonnox products so have never used their limiter. I know their plugs are highly lauded especially their Oxford EQ so based on that their limiter should be pretty good

 

Last edited: Oct 28, 2016

That IK Multimedia Stealth Limiter has actually been my sort of go-to limiter for quite a while, I stepped up to it from L1 (and I started using L1 after I ditched Ozone and preset-playing). Great to have unity-gain monitoring, and it's pretty damn transparent.

 

Toneboosters one (Barricade) is great, too. Can easily give 11-15dB input gain and not break a sweat (colors really little, depending on source). Ozone was good too but I haven't used it since forever. I think the limiter, let's say, was one of the less interesting parts of the bundle. IK Stealth is good, too; not as tolerant with gain though (still quite transparent) [still kinda prefer their old one for the options but it's rather harsh sounding]. Mostly like IK's comps and EQs and Waves H-series. Those are probably the ones I'm most "attracted" to but I guess anything will do.

Also like the Studio One built-in one. A + for FL built-in, too.

(666 messages, yay )

 

Interesting thoughts from everyone here.... I have always personally found the LL3 to make stuff LOUD, that's for sure, but I think of it more as a multi band distortion unit to tell you the truth... A lot of it's brightness comes from that to my ears... It works at getting that hyper compressed Miley Cyrus Wreckingball sound.. but I find it dangerous in the wrong hands... (..a lot of times mine! )... I actually use it more on busses or whatnot, as it is good for that... and I don't mind parallel smashing stuff...

Agreed about the IK Stealth Limiter... especially with ISP over sampling at x16 or x64 etc... (crushes cpu), but seems to bring things up without breaking up as much...

At the end of my mastering chain, I will use that, right after the Fab Filter ProL (?) with oversampling on, each doing a bit of the lifting, and it seems to work really well, and seems to keep things more as I intended etc...

I'll also use some Ozone modules prior to these for different things... some of the modules in the new Ozone 7 are great.. and there is another BX unit I like.... but all these things are subjective...

interested in checking out this Boz unit for sure....

 

What about vladg limiter N6, dmg audio limitless (latest version), AOM factory invisible limiter g1 and g2, KClip, StandardClip? Some people like psp xenon as well, but it is transparent, useful for not so heavy loud stuff. Also something by Flux, such as Flux pure limiter.

 

I test as many limiters as I can but I keep coming back to the Slate FX-G, as long as you don't go too far I can't find anything that retains the transient punch like it can. Thanks for info on the Wall, I'll see about demoing it.

 

Just got an email from plugin alliance, they have some halloween deals, best one is their limiter, Brainworx bx_limiter @$19.00.
Thats a better deal than The wall.

Deal ends Oct 31st.

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_limiter.html

 

Wow thats a great deal.

 

IK Stealth Limiter
A.O.M Invisible Limiter
DMG Limitless
Slate FX-G

I'll use one or more of these depending on the program material to get what i need ;)

 

I love Elephant, but there is a limitation : it creates low mid freqs on full mix.
Nice on an anemic mix, but can create mud on another. You need to pre-EQ it sometimes...
Fabfilter is more versatile, but with less "personality". Slate one is pure crap, it totally ruin transients whatever setting.
loudmax 1.5 is freeware and really impressive if gain is the only concern...and so on.
I already have enough good limiters ;)

 

I have to admit Vladg No. 6 is really awesome, it has so much character but I have kinda forgotten about it. It's surprising how much it changes a mix. With regards to the rest... so many options so little time. Thanks for the recommendations

Thanks for the heads up, looking at the deal as I type this.

So you wouldn't nail down an 'ultimate' limiter if you had to choose one? DMG's EQ is really awesome but have never had a look at their limiter and I'm embarrassed to admit that I own Slate Digital's stuff but have not actually used the FX-G


As for IK Multimedia Stealth Limiter... Just WOW. Really! It's like silk made out of butter and cream coating my mix. The x16 ISPL eats my computer alive but nothing I've tested comes close to that algorithm. I really, really like it. I was gonna buy Acustica Audio's Sand Channels Strip but that limiter is something awesome, and it's 5 euro more in price...