Hi!
Recently, I can't decide between these two plugins, they are both excellent and can get very loud and close sounding to each other.

My question goes towards people who have or had them both and which you liked better. I think with many tools, you discover the downsides not until using them for a long time, but if you didn't like something from the beginning, I would love to hear the opinion too.

Please, no off-topic discussion abut loudness wars or other plugins. We are not gearspace

 

Newfangled Elevate takes it for me. Cleaner GUI, more intuitive, lower cpu usage, a more advanced clipper that preserves the low-end better. They can probably both get equally loud, but I can get there much more easily with Elevate.

 

I would also pick Elevate if I had to choose one or the other. I sometimes use Limitless just for the limiter, I rarely touch the clipper as I've never really found that it adds anything good to the master. In Elevate I use the whole chain, and especially the transient shaper and clipper. I would never have thought of the idea to place a transient shaper and clipper after the limiter, but it works incredibly well for recovering some of the transients after the limiter and instead distorting them so you get some high-frequency distortion at every transient. This kinda tricks the ear to think that the transients are still there even though it's just distortion.

 

Wrong comparison, son

Elevate tries to be a little bit Limitless and a little bit Multiplicity. I would use former two instead of Elevate as they give much more control and clarity.
But you have to experiment with both setups yourself.

 

Thanks so far for the opinions. Why is the comparison wrong, though? They are both advertised as mastering limiters.

 

Because Elevate is trying to treat signal slightly like Multiplicity(like MB compressor) at some extent(like what they do with transients). And I found that using two of these tools together gives much superior results compared to using broadband compression and then MB limiter.
But Multiplicity is a little bit confusing tool, you'll have to learn how to use it to really gain those advs that I described. I would suggest gearslutz forum as there's not much videos on the plugin.

 

ok, that sounds very interesting! One thing that I don't like about elevate is that it's strictly L = R. In Limitless, you can unlink the channels. The elevate transient trick is indeed very cool, and I think it works very well! The Clipper in Limitless is a little confusing for me.

 

I added a poll for the people that maybe don't want to write much.