Hi people, I'd like to know your take on mastering-grade limiters that can inject juicy amounts of RMS without breaking the sound too much. How loud can you get without causing extreme pumping, downright audible clipping, or undesirable brittleness?

I love how the FG-X can let you get away with lots of upright loudness at little to no harshness, but the [k]'d version for Mac is 32 bits, no presets and 32 Lives hasn't worked for me.

Anyhow, it'd be good I know how you deal with the topic.

Lots of luck to you all,

Carlos

 

elephant elephant elephant elephant voxengo elephant elephant elephant elephant.
(as you can clearly see im a huge fan of voxengo elephant as it really is the best brickwall limiter now in the future and for ever more period its just that fucking good)

 

Kuassa Kratos is another pretty simple one I like, as to how far you can push things it really depends on the material, and how much headroom you left yourself.

 

Waves L2.
But if you really want a good limiter, you'll have to go hardware.

And there's no such thing as bedroom-plugin-mastering... let's call it "having fun with my computer"

 

I'm by no means a pro and I honestly haven't tried that many different limiters, but I've been getting some great results from the Fabfilter Pro L limiter. I used the L2 as well as the L3 for a bit, but I feel that Fabfilters limiter is a lot more transparent and I've been getting great results with it

 

I tried it briefly and it seemed good.

There's also Yohng's free L1 clone: http://www.yohng.com/software/w1limit.html

 

+1 for hardware though you'll still have to feed into a vst limiter since hardware can clip.

 

yes Waves L2

 

Ozone 5's Loudness Maximizer module, especially offline mode. It features adjustable stereo linking, transient preservation, DC offset and the best dithering algorithm (should you need it) on the market. I like to throw on a full instance of Ozone 5 for quick mastering for soundtracks, but I've never been thrilled with the other modules for serious work. Even compared to stuff like Waves' L3-LL, the Loudness Maximizer just sounds amazing to me. I usually put some very minimal EQ, a light, transparent compressor and an instance of u-he Satin behind it on my mastering chain.

 

have you tried the Klanghelm plugins? The DC8C2 has a great brickwall master compressor. Very affordable plugin too if you wanna support the developer.

 

Betabugs did a re-skin of that Yohng's free L1 clone Scroll down and it is on the left side

 

You're right, I should have been more specific... hardware AND analog.

 

http://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/voxengo-elephant-4-0-599359

 

Do you believe that even without trying it by yourself?
I tried Voxengo Elephant 4 and made myself a test comparing it with Fabfilter Pro-L and AOM Invisible Limiter.
Pro-L and Invisible Limiter preserved the bass frequencies the most, while Elephant had the weakest bass. They all three sounds transparent only when they're not pushed hard, but when you do push them really hard, only Pro-L and Invisible Limiter succeeds for me, while Elephant lost the bass and overall balance. Try it yourself and you'll see. Don't believe something just because is wrote by "pro's". Some articles can be "bought" if the developer really wants to make himself some good advertising.
P.S. I don't say Elephant is bad, it's actually really great if you don't push it hard, but you can't call it "the best" when actually Pro-L and Invisible Limiter beats it in the loudness purposes.

 

Pro-L

 

Different styles(genres), different approaches to mix and master, different quantity of tracks (it depends too), different thinking(or mentality).
I like:
Ozone 5 or higher
Pro-L (latest)
Invisible Limiter (latest)
Voxengo Elephant 4 and higher
Oxford Limiter (latest version)
Kuassa Kratos Maximizer 1.0.9 or higher
PSP VintageWarmer 2.5 or higher
Buzzroom limiters (not bad, try them)

I hate slate digital fg-x's limiter, it has a lot of distortions, non-transparent to me, harshness and aggressive, and not so loud. I like this plugin, but limiter is bad to me.

 

There are no analog hardware brickwall limiters, mate *no*

Brickwall limiters are one case where digital technology has a clear advantage over analog.
Or let's put it this way, you can only realise a brickwall limiter in the digital domain.

Why?
Because you need look-ahead processing for a real brickwall limiter.


As for loudness:
If you rely on your limiter to make your song loud, you are already lost.
This has to happen in the mixing stage already... the limiter is best used only for clipping protection, and adding a few dB more loudness.

If you are using your limiter only to squash your track, it will always sound horrible, no matter which limiter you use.
If you, however, achieved the loudness during the mixing stage already, then it also doesn't really matter much which limiter you use for the final step - as long as it can block all peaks reliably, of course.

 

agreed with a lot of peeps here

waves L2 is my go to. and i go to it quite often. there is also a limiter in izotope ozone if you are mastering a lot of tracks.

 

I combine LVC Audio's clipshifter with Fabfilter Pro-L, but because of this topic, I tested Kuassa Kratos and that thing is good!

 

I've tried most of the above... and in my opinion Izotope Maximizer is the best and most versatile

If you're looking for maximum loudness, using that in conjunction with a soft clipper (I personally love the soft clipping on the Elysia Alpha Mastering Compressor) will get you there ;)