I know the question about limiter on the master comes up a lot but i was wondering why so many people still use it.

I use it only to prevent damage to my speakers and ears (and i think many people do that aswell), but not to process the sound in any way (when composing), it may be used later when mixing or mastering.

The most common practice (pre-master) i've seen is to use the limiter on the master channel when it's red to stop it from clipping, since i don't fully understand the technical side of things this may sound basic to some but, where does the distortion go if you do that?, you are taming the peaks but how much does it affect the sound and is that perceived by engineers and people that work with audio? i know i can't tell the difference between a track that is clipping but a limiter was used on it and a track that had plenty of headroom and is mixed/mastered properly, i can perceive overcompression tho, that's easier to hear (at least to me).

Aren't we supposed to finish a mix at -3db or lower so the mastering guy brings the level up?. I know you would never send a track that has processes on the master but since this is a very common practice i was wondering if you can get away with it somehow. Should i just keep leveling tracks the "normal" way leaving enough headroom or should i join the loudness war club?. opinions?

 

When you clip a channel (raw digital clipping) and get that tell-tale nasty distortion, that's actually a form of limiting. It's a shitty form (because it's digital and harsh) and rarely good for anything. The waveform hits the max value and since it's "digital 0" it can't go anywhere it just outputs 0,0,0... and so on, for every peak in the audio that is trying to reach beyond that 0.

Limiters do the same exact thing in principle, but they're more gentle about it. They watch for those incoming peaks and try to anticipate, turn down the volume for a split second for it so that the peak kinda retains some original shape. The thing is, depending on how the limiter is doing this, it can create different audible effects of its own. That's why "transparent" limiters are usually prized: they're squishing the waveform but it doesn't sound too obviously like they squished it. This is done many different ways, some of which try to mimic how analog hardware responds to overloading (they don't have a hard digital 0, they can go beyond it into "overdrive" and start sounding different than before).

As for what you're supposed to do, it's the current year - you can do whatever you damn well want. Both middle fingers up, this is punk rock. The sound of limiting or even harsh clipping is its own sound. You may find a creative use for it. For example, I often limit the shit out of peaky percussion tracks that go as subtle underlaying elements in the main groove. Brutally limit or clip the percussion until it's at about -18db RMS (average level) and the highest peak in the whole percussion signal only goes up to about -6db. Then it's much easier to mix the thing later, as it's just an element. Even nasty digital clipping can have its uses for communicating certain feelings to the audience!

On the other hand what you're doing is good for keeping the audio nice and pristine, and if you send your work done that way to a mastering engineer, they will be very thankful and there will be one less mastering engineer slipping away into uncontrollable alcoholism and drug abuse, due to recieving clipped waveforms day in and day out, then being asked to "master" it.

The bottom line is that you can always limit your thing later. You can't really un-limit it back though, it's very time consuming and hard to even try. People who use limiting on the master as they compose are doing that to prevent ear damage from sudden peaks from experimental plugins and sound techniques (happens more than you'd think), and also because they just like the sound of it. If you don't hit it too hard, then the overall sound is comparable to what I was describing before (hard limiting that perc element). It's like a lazy man's option to immediately get feedback on how it's all gonna sound later when it's squashed later by the mastering limiter.

The guys who do this will usually take off the limiter and all the rest of the master channel stuff before they render the final result though, and that final render is done with plenty of headroom. Makes sense.

Limiters are like buzz clippers at the barber, easily cuts off of any peaky shit sticking out that you don't want. Compressors are more like puff hair gel (mousse? or whatever the hell they call it) and hairdryer combo, for blowing up your audio slightly with more phatness as if it was a balloon. Is a vocal track boring - give it an afro with the LA2A. They let you massage more broadly in what's between the peaks to whip it into shape (phatness) or go for the opposite effect and reduce the phatness to deliberately make your hair more peaky (punch), for that coveted statue of liberty look.

 

Last edited: Nov 3, 2016

if you push any channel in clip, you'll notice that it takes quite a heavy gain to actually hear the clipping effect. This is because the DAWs are using 32 bit/sample bit depth on the internal busses and this allows for a lot more headroom and dynamic range. The problems are: 1. most of the plugins especially the emulations are working best at -18 dB FS (a thing of how analog domain works) so if you hit them with 0 dB FS will effectively drive them into distortion. 2. You can have visual clipping in the master without actually hearing something's off, but as soon as you convert to 24-bit when exporting, those artefacts will be visible. These are the main reasons people stay out of the reds.

Fact: the mastering engineers actually use digital clipping to get more loudness then feed the clipped signal into a limiter (more shaved peaks, less load on the limiter, less distortion). See tracks with diamond shape on goniometer.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 4, 2016

Explanation is correct, but values are exchanged. Digital clipping occurs at digital 1, not 0. Digital 0 refers to -inf dBFS

 

Try this

http://www.cerberusaudio.com/Software/Products/Ice9/

They also have a limiter with ice9 tech,

 

Although I dont use this limiter in my setup. Limitless has a built in pre-limiter clipper just for this...