i was watching a video from Avicii making a track

at 7:52 he seems to put a limitor

a) can you please confirm its on the master he puts that on? i don't use FL studio and can't understand...but i think he puts it on the master?

b) is he essentially producing into a mastering limitor? so he basically puts the mastering limitor straight up from the beginning and everything is pushed up to 0db?

c) what do you need to be aware of when doing it this approach? do you need to go back into the limitor every now and then and lower the threshold or something?

thanks

 

yes, he puts it on his master bus

 

a) Yes.
b) Yes.
c) I haven't seen this plugin before but it looks basically like a maximizer, like the one in Cubase, for instance.
I once tried this workflow and find it by no means easier. The problem is with every additional sound all the other sounds drop in level and you're tempted to try to compensate this by increasing the volume.
But no, you don't need to adjust this plugin all the time.

 

Kjaerhus was a great plugins company in the early 2000.
I had most of their plugins until I switched to x64. They closed down somewhere around 2005 but if you're interested you can still download some of their plugins, including the Mastering Limiter mentioned above, here: http://vstmuseum.com/grid_vst_Kjaerhus/

 

1) Put the limiter on the track

2) Turn the volume all the way up

3) Blow away the competition!

 

C) Working "into the limiter" is an approach that many pop/hard electronic producers adopt. The idea is to have it in there crushing stuff while you mix, so you have a better feel for how the overall track will sound while you're mixing it. Since the limiter sometimes alters the mix balance quite a lot, especially when pushed - which in Avincii style music it's always going to be.

Things to keep in mind: 1) you still should mix at a lower volume, even though the limiter is on (to save your own ears and sanity). At extreme volume your ears will "tire out" in minutes and no longer help you make good decisions. Aim for a listening volume where it's similar to ordinary calm conversation, unless you're working on bass which does temporarily need high volume usually. This can be as simple as a utility plugin after the limiter that turns the volume down - this is purely for listening purposes while you're mixing and needs to be disabled when you render.

2) Though he mixes into the limiter, 99% of the time the mastering engineer if you use one, will ask for a non-limited version of your track with nothing on the master. So keep that in mind, always render a version of your track with nothing on the master and keep it around in your backups.

 

personally i dont like to put a limiter on the master while producing, but sometimes i will listen through a limiter for reference. there are mixed opinions about this, but here is mine.

the limiter on the master bus will never end up being the same limiter and settings as the one used in the final master. on top of that, most MEs will use more than just a limiter in their process.
my point is that your reference limiter on the master will sound very different to the MEs process, so you are not hearing an example of the track post-mastering at all, you are actually just hearing a squashed version of your track.
ask your ME for a suggested chain and settings to use in your master while producing and see what he/she says.

on top of that you are not hearing what you are creating. a crude example is if you have an element that is close to the limiter threshold and you decide you need it louder compared to everything else then you will raise the gain and the result will be unbalanced. as soon as you disable the limiter that sound will jump out of the mix and overpower other elements. this means you either have to go back and make adjustments (in which case you wasted your time with the limiter), or your ME has to fix the problem (not his/her job and they will probably just send it back to you to be fixed if they are good).

when you are mixing it is important to mix like there is no mastering stage. the less your ME has to do the better. if a sound needs compression then compress it in the mix, not the master buss. if your mix buss needs compression then do it there.
your track should sound good before you even pass it to an ME, they are great, but they are not magicians.

all that said, there are benefits to referencing through a limiter occasionally. an ME will use a limiter, likely as well as other compressors, so the balance will not quite be the same. listening through a limiter will help you understand the balance of louder and quieter sounds after the mastering process.
however, if you want your mix loud you should do that during mixing, so in a perfect world your ME would not even need to use any compression at all other than a very gentle glue. this means that if you are relying on a master limiter during mixing then you are just compensating for a bad mix and the ME will have to fix it for you the best they can in the mastering stage or send it back your way for repair. the worst part of that is the more you rely on the limiter on your master the less you will learn about getting your sound right before it gets to the mastering house.

 

Last edited: May 5, 2020

Worry about making a decent-sounding mix. There are a million ways and a million different mastering joints you can go to in order to make it loud once it's done. If you don't know what a limiter is and what it does, my advice is, under no circumstances should you be using one, anyway.