PD shows slightly different results on the harmonic analysis tab to me (might be some plugin build difference?), I don't know if there's any multiband shenanigan going on (I've seen similar results in other compressors but I'm not knowledgeable enough to point out precisely why this happens) but it's still cleaner than all the other options available, including the AOM. It doesn't means it sounds best for every occasion but it's a good alternative to certain tasks (like boosting the volume of a poorly recorded and mixed audio for example).

 

Interesting topic.

 

Great post.!! Gems of tips..!! Thanks a lot..

 

I'm in dire need of a budget transparent limiter. Seems strange that it's not as common as one might think... I wanted to try the Fircomp2 from sister but can't get the unquarantine.command to work on Ventura. I'd buy it right now if anyone can confirm that the command code works with the current available version for purchase. That price is righteous.

 

Arturia too ? didn't know that. Yeah, they are great people that managed to come up with some quality things long time ago, I'm under the assumption they leveled up and should be ahead of the curve among their peers for now. Yeah I like all of their plugins and been using them a lot.

Thank you, you are very kind.

Ah, I'm using the R2R version, the one that comes with activation screen once in a while, I keep activating it now it doesnt come up no more. Multiband limiting was never a bad thing, as with everything multiband it has tendency to change the balance if not done correctly. I think the addition of the clipping (or whatever that is) on the low end is a smart move tbh as when everything brought up to the ceiling, the sound will ended up losing the low end perception especially on heavy limiting (pink noise theory). Harmonics will help it stands out more with added low mid content from the generated harmonics and I suspect they are already tuned to be just be enough so the balance remain the same because I'd say I never get a problem of the track becoming too bright or losing balance after being maximized using Boost. I have no complaint about Boost capability to do what it is advertised to do, it's a great plugin. Hoping for an update and stable version tho.

I think FirComp2 will be a good purchase, it's easily one of the best compressor ever in the digital domain but yeah you should atleast try an extended demo version of it first, who knows it's not what you're looking for. Sorry cant help with Mac stuff.

 

I think I remember reading something like that.


Both Arturia and Pulsar are based in Grenoble, a small French town NOT famous for its audio companies. It would be a huge coincidence to have not one but two of them in the same location lol.

Edit : found this after a quick google search :

"“All three of us worked for various audio plug-in and hardware companies before setting up Pulsar,” recalls Vincent. “That’s where we met!”

Even though they all had solid careers working with industry leaders like Arturia, Eiosis, and Slate Digital, the group felt compelled to create their own company."

Not a bad track record at all.
I know Arturia's synth emulations don't tickle everyone's amygdala (I love them tbh, as I've never had the chance to play with any of the copied hardware -and probably never will for some- the only thing that matters is the fun I get from playing with them, and boy, are they fun), but I haven't read much criticism of their FX emulations.
Their spring reverb is the best out there, imo. I have some experience with spring reverbs and nothing comes closer (sorry, u-he. I love you but Twangstorm tries way too hard, and fails).
And their EMT plate is just... *chef's kiss*

So I wouldn't be surprised the guys at Pulsar worked at Arturia's FX emulations.

 

Last edited: Jan 17, 2024

I don't really consider myself an authority on mastering tips to be honest, i always consider myself a student, but i do share little knowledge bombs from time to time on both sites. Anyone is welcome to ask me any questions, I don't know how could possibly package tips into a post like yours without being asked a specific question first to prompt it

 

I found a demo version on the developer's site that does indeed work. Thank you Stevie Dude for these notes and recommendations!

Thank you Djord Emer for the additional limiter tips!

 

Thank you bro I was using the older R2R not the newer TCD.

At least for Spotify and Apple, the final output when streaming is set to -1 after being converted/compressed. If you tend to have more dense material, having the extra headroom on final export @ -2dBTP helps to make sure no extra junk gets introduced in your signal for the consumer. Not a lot of MEs seem to follow this practice yet, and results vary. Sort of same with dithering. I haven't yet tested in the real world but I would rather sacrifice 1dB now then to have to worry and cry about not doing it later.

Thanks for the tip. Hope I can make this AOM G3 TP sound good, I just can't get other TP to sound good even with minimal reduction. Transient energy gets lost.

 

wdym transient energy get lost ? you are not doing it top down ? (smash first then other processing) I used to have that kind of problem before long time ago, but then I've learn that doing it top down is more sensible so the limiter has close to no say whatsover to the final sound.

 

I do top down but my drums and other upfront elements lose some crispiness/edge with TP on vs off. I guess I like the sound of intersample peaking.

 

Oh I see. Another way is add it back with compressor or transient designer but yeah, doing it your way works too.

 

fantastic tips, for the #1) yes the phase shift (or lack of) is what makes the audible difference,
I highly recommend watching recent TDR plugins video by Dan Worrall on the topic of EQ/filters especially for mastering context:

 

This is gold, thanks! Using TimP Surge EQ (GML 8200).

 

Stevie Dude for President!! !

 

-2.0db is absolutely unnecessary. No pro mastering engineers i've talked to do this. Every single one i've talked to does -0.3 or -0.2, and sometimes -0.5 and -1.0, but never -2.0.
From a record label's perspective, the ME's job is to make it super loud. They will send back a -2.0 master.

A) The mp3 artefacts that would come from a -0.3 master are neglible to real world enjoying experience. The master will already be loud enough to where any artefacts aren't audible. There's gonna be a degradation of quality regardless of if it's -0.2 or -2.0. But the difference in volume is much bigger than the difference in artefacts. Airpods are the most common listening format these days, people listening on those aren't gonna notice a 1% cleaner mp3.
B) A streaming platform can always turn playback down, but they wont turn it up without using a crappy limiter algorithm.
C) Streaming services are always changing their format requirements and so it's not worth mastering based on their recommendations. Spotify and Apple already have so much stuff in their catalog from pre-2014 when everything was pushed to its limits anyway, so they obviously have the capacity to upload a -0.2 master, there's no need to reduce the peak so far down to -2.0. Their recommendations aren't necessary. They will not reject a -0.2 master. Apple haven't enforced their "mastering for itunes" rules for years.
D) You gotta remember, a song will live in more places than just Spotify. There's youtube, soundcloud, night clubs, radio, general file sharing. In 10-20 years when there's some other platform, are you (or the client) gonna be glad you sacrificed all that volume for Spotify?
E) The sound of the master comes from the processing, not the conversion algorithm. More importantly, the feeling of the song comes from the music and the artist. We all know how much loudness affects the listener's perception of the listening experience. Don't sacrifice the artist's emotion in favour of a conversion algorithm

Really grinds my gears when people recommend -2.0 without real world experience, cos people then read it and then pass it on to other people, and then the whole audio world becomes misinformed.
Just look at what Ian Shepherd did. He spooked every amateur mastering/mixing engineer out of compressing their music, and it spread like a virus. Lots of pro ME's are so annoyed by Ian Shepherd's influence on the industry (Brian Lucey being one of them, Stevie), because they now always get clients mistakenly thinking that the final master has gotta have all these unnecessary restrictions, and they gotta re-educate them. Not to single you out toetea, but your post is an extension of that influence. Heaps of youtuber audio engineers push this -1.0 - 2.0 thing too, cos they read it somewhere and thought it was true.

There's nothing wrong with -2.0, especially if you don't care about competing in the commercial marketplace, but it's absolutely unnecessary and shouldn't be recommended imo

 

I tried out 2 of your suggestions on a master last night Stevie.
There's something i just wanted to add to the HF & LF peak limiting for people to consider.

RE: The HF limiting tip:
I'm a big believer in this processing, and i'd legitimately forgotten to use it for the past year or so! When i did it last night i was reminded of something, and just wanted to make a small suggestion/alternative from your specific settings recommendation.
You referenced the Maselec MPL-2's ability to do it so well. Part of what makes it so good was that it's able to compress the HF relative to the input signal coming through. So for that reason i believe it's better to have the "Type" setting set to "Rel".
I actually saw a pro ME talking about this specific Rel setting on this specific plugin on Gearspace (a year or 2 ago). I don't remember who it was but he talked about how he uses it as a quasi-replacement for the Maselec.

E.g. this is the setting i had it on last night:



I had the range set to 4.5db which had the GR maxing out at around 2db (meaning, it would spike up to -2 or -1 every once in a while, but most of the time it was sitting at -0db), but you can set it to whatever works for the source material.
The cool thing about the "relative" setting is that it is truly a "set it and forget it" preset that you can use.
The thing about the "Absolute" setting is that you're always compressing whatever goes above that HF threshold regardless of how much higher or lower the HF's are in relation to the whole frequency range.
Maybe some people prefer it that way if they have their gain staging routine down to an exacted repeated process, and they know exactly how loud they intend to have every single song they master.
The "Rel" setting is more useful imo because it adapts to any music, and it ensure you wont be compressing unnecessary high end (or not compressing enough). With "Rel", it will only compress the HF if the HF is too much in relation to the whole frequency range.
That's the way the Maselec did it too, iirc.

Notice i have the frequency set to 3.5k instead of 2.5k too. To me, 2.5 is a little low for a HF limiter.
I wasn't aware that the Maselec's HF lim setting was 2.5k. If that's the case, i'd imagine it must be a shelf. Whereas i think the HF lim in TDR Limiter6 might have slightly more of a "peak" shape to it, depending on the frequency that's chosen.
Personally, i want it to take sibilance into consideration as well as some high mids.
Tbh, i probably should've gone a bit higher than 3.5k. Sibilances in masters are the worst!
The higher you go up, the more you need increase the range (cos the voltage/energy of say 6k frequencies is lower than say 3k).

____________________________________________

RE: The LF limiting tip:

I just wanna urge people to be very mindful with this tip. And remember that it's completely dependant on the song you're mastering. It's definitely not a "set and forget" setting.

Know that the entire purpose of LF limiting is to take strain off the compressor that comes after it.
It's not something that makes it "sound better" by itself.

And what's the purpose of taking strain off the compressor that comes after it? To be able to compress the song even more (without added pumping).

And what's the purpose of being able to compress a song even more? To be able to make the song louder more consistently over longer periods of time.

But that's the thing.

In today's environment, with normalized playback on streaming services, getting measureably louder isn't necessarily an advantage.
Today, it's smarter to get more PERCEIVED loudness (that doesn't show up on the metering measurements).

And how do you get perceived loudness? Well, one big way is by having more transient attack/punch.
More transient will feel more loud and exciting.

But guess what LF limiting does, it dampens one of your main weapons: the transient of the low end. VERY IMPORTANT.

Granted, the "compressed" sound of a song can have a feeling of more energy too. So LF limiting isn't useless. I'm just saying: be mindful.
It's a real balancing act. If you limit the LF too much you will kill one of your main weapons for perceived loudness: the punch and liveliness of you kick.
On the other hand, if you kick is poking out too much then it's gonna trigger your compressor too much and you're not gonna be able to get a good amount of compression without getting the pumpy sound (which btw can sometimes be sought after for certain styles).

So don't just use LF limiting because you saw someone say it. Make the decision based on what the song needs.
And ultimately the decision to use LF will really come down to whether or not you want to squeeze more juice out of your compressor.
And the decision whether to squeeze more juice out of the compressor will come down to whether you want the song to be louder more consistently or not. And that decision is completely dependant on the song.

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2024

About the 2.5k, I picked it up from the MPL2 manual and from Reuben Cohen specifically mentioned about it, I forgot which video since it was too long ago. It could only be 3 sources :
a) Lurssen Mastering YT channel
b) MWTM Mastering Series
c) Produce Like A Pro where they have Lurssen as guest, few videos.

I will be a really long time to find which one because it's only talked about few seconds in hour long videos, but anyone can check them and watch the whole video, I guarantee one can learn a thing or two from it.

Also it's a shelf, from the manual :



also from the graphic you can see the cutoff frequency is roughly around 2.3k-2.5kHz. Another famous unit for this job is the ETEC DBTL20, from its manual I learn that the HF Limiter cutoff frequency is at 8kHz. Also a shelf. I have tried using 8k, but I like it at 2.5kHz, preference I guess.



Regarding the "Absolute" and "Relative" options. I figured the Absolute setting works best as transparent Peak Limiter, meaning the transfer curve of the compressor is more aggressive (hard knee) with Peak type detector. So it cut down the peak without changing the dynamic of the track if used properly with the right amount.

while the Relative option works as more gentle RMS detection compressor with softer knee, it works really well if soft "De-essing" is the goal, or overall balancing tho it's not quite transparent dynamic-wise and the change in dynamic is perceivable, at least compared to the Absolute setting. The difference can be clearly heard on the Delta mode.

It depends on how one would like to use it, Peak Limiting or De-essing. I rarely doing the De-essing on the master since I have the access to the whole multi-track so I'd rather do it on the source. As someone already pointed out, if the HF Limiter is changing the dynamic the other known "artefact" one will get is the Low end will pop up everytime the HF is dipped which will create another problem. Similar to using the Dynamic mode for it in Pro-Q3. So I stick with the Peak Limiting mode all these years to avoid those kind of problems. Still, it's not a wrong thing to do using the Relative mode or doing De-essing, sometimes it's what the track needs. It depends.

You are right about the LF Limiting, that's why I highlighted it in red on main post because it's a dangerous job if not done correctly in relative to other processing. I suggested doing it in conjunction with compressor or clipper after and keep the limiting as minimal as possible.

Just want to add the HF Limiter or De-esser on the Pulsar Audio 8200 also works a lot like the TDR Limiter HF Limiter with Peak style detection and transparent enough for the job at the right settings.

EDIT : I've re-read your post and figured the "shelf" or "bell" you referred is on the TDR, might've misunderstood that, you can disregard that part I guess. I haven't really bother to check it and assumed it's a shelf, will re-check later if I got the time.

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2024

posting a reply so i won't lose the thread... i don't trust google bookmarking system lol

 

Ah ok interesting. I didn't realize the compression behavior on the HF limiter on TDR was different depending on if it's Relative or Absolute. I assumed that setting would just change the detection circuit but not the compression style. Well there ya go