Limiters

[Merah]

I never use them aside from making my tracks louder. Ive heard of people using them "creatively".. What am i missing out on? ?

[The_G]

Some people apparently put them on kick drums, or on a drum bus. I don't.

[Mattias]

It's often a bad habit. I would not advice anyone doing that unless they really know what they are doing and use limiters for tracking. But then again it's often better to tame, let's say nasty snares in metal with a touch of clipping or parallel clipping instead of a limiter.

[Wiu]

In terms of using limiters in a creative way, just slap one on a sound and experiment like you would any other effect. Fuck the rules in that respect.

[Lost to the Void]

Yeah, you can get creative effects with traditional and analog or analog style limiters but their behaviour is very very different to modern brickwall limiters which essentially just kill dynamics mostly transparently. So in terms of new limiters all you are doing is killing dynamics which is not really a creatively helpful tool.
Older style limiters pump, suck and do a lot of weird stuff when you push them and abuse them so they can definitely be used creatively, of course you need to be aware that Transients and dynamics are going to get shredded so if you overdo it you can end up with a lifeless mix.

Unfortunately the vst realm doesn't offer that much in the way of analog style limiters, there are some but they are few and far between.

Some good ones if you are in the box.

Sense LM-2Z
VOS Thrillseeker VBL (very good)
vladG limiter no.6
Mellowmuse LM1V
A.O.M IL2
LVC Audio Limited-T
Overtone FC70
112db Big Blue Limiter (can get very messy)

[Merah]

Older style limiters pump, suck and do a lot of weird stuff when you push them and abuse them

Bit like my wife that!

[Merah]

Yeah, you can get creative effects with traditional and analog or analog style limiters but their behaviour is very very different to modern brickwall limiters which essentially just kill dynamics mostly transparently. So in terms of new limiters all you are doing is killing dynamics which is not really a creatively helpful tool.
Older style limiters pump, suck and do a lot of weird stuff when you push them and abuse them so they can definitely be used creatively, of course you need to be aware that Transients and dynamics are going to get shredded so if you overdo it you can end up with a lifeless mix.

Unfortunately the vst realm doesn't offer that much in the way of analog style limiters, there are some but they are few and far between.

Some good ones if you are in the box.

Sense LM-2Z
VOS Thrillseeker VBL (very good)
vladG limiter no.6
Mellowmuse LM1V
A.O.M IL2
LVC Audio Limited-T
Overtone FC70
112db Big Blue Limiter (can get very messy)

Cool, will check these ones out.

[Merah]

Man, the amount of dope plugins that are windows only. Feel like I'm missing out

[Merah]

Gona give the mellowmuse a go now

[Mattias]

Not to mention that brickwall limiters distorts the sound in a very very nasty way

[Lost to the Void]

Not to mention that brickwall limiters distorts the sound in a very very nasty way

That's pretty much how schranze happened ey?

[Mattias]

Hah, yeah I guess. L2 crush digital distortion printed on vinyl. Crzn Crzn Crzn Crzn

[sergiobR1]

you shouldn't use limiters on individual channels if u don't know what u are doing. When you limit, you are compressing and limiting a signal

[Mono-xID]

Read an interview with Randomer recently. He's using like up to 5 limiters for just sculpting a kick. Dunno if he was taking the piss in that interview.

[Lost to the Void]

Definitely a piss take.

[dubdub]

"Well, that's another thing you get told not to do.

I wish that no one ever said that to me. I limit everything. And not even one limiter. Sometimes I make kick drums out of weird sources just for the challenge, like a Roland tambourine. So in these cases, I'll use something like five limiters. A limiter then an EQ, then another limiter and another EQ because the behaviour of the limiter is influenced by the frequency content of the sound.

I think my top tip for making stuff bang is to smash drums with limiters and saturation but separate out the attack. You're completely removing the transients through that processing and you've got to find a way to maintain those spikes. There's a million ways to do that. Parallel compression for instance. I know some super techy drum & bass people who use FM synthesis to replace the transients they've squashed. They'll make their drums and crush the shit out of them so there's no dynamics whatsoever and then they'll go back and insert these super punchy FM clicks over where all the transients used to be. "

Doesn't read like a piss take to me.

[Lost to the Void]

I reads as confused, one minute talking about limiters, then talking about parallel compression.
Once something is brickwalled, it`s brickwalled, adding another limiter after something has been brickwalled won`t do anything, it`s brickwalled already, a wall is a wall is a wall, unless you then push out content again to unbrickwall it and then re-brick it again, in which case, that`s just bad *additive* technique, when you could do the same thing in a much simpler way with 1 limiter and good EQ technique.

And clearly, when you listen to Randomer stuff, there are dynamics in his mixes so..........

[Mattias]

Really, just limit it once then use a gain plugin after if you're doing it like that.

[aoud]

The EMI TG12413 Limiter plugins are wonderful, sadly discontinued but still running with 32 Lives. Excellent color for certain things like leads.

Also, the vladg Limiter №6 is brilliant and without cost. Highly recommend it.

PS Also check out vladg's Molot compressor, Sigma mode on it is exactly what I was looking for in a DSP form for a long time.

[msl]

I only use them ever on snare/clap when needed or very rarely on bass if you want to peg it at a specific volume.

I do have a brickwall on my master bus for listening purposes while producing, it comes off when going to mastering.


All that shite commercial EDM is made with limiters, its common practice to put them on every channel, to make every single sound uber loud with zero dynamics.

.