# Limiters?



## Python Blue (Aug 4, 2013)

I'm curious what other people's thoughts on these are. My relative absence the past two days was because I migrated some of my tracks for my next album over to compressors instead of limiters. Course, it sounds similar because for the master compression, I used no attack or release and set the RMS to 0 milliseconds, but I set it to a finite compression ratio in order to reduce the inevitable clipping (usually it was 6:1).

What are your thoughts? Is this a better method to use?


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## Vukasin (Aug 6, 2013)

I don't think there's really a "better" method to use for anything when it comes to mixing (to a certain degree anyway), it's all about what works best for the song, ya know? I prefer using a limiter because I think everything sounds more consistent, but I mostly do metal which is heavily distorted and loud. Again, it all really comes down to the song and what you want to get out of the song.

EDIT: Actually, after thinking about this for a while I'm not sure how your method works exactly. A compressor pulls transients up while a limiter pushes transients down. If you're using a compressor in place of a limiter then there is no way that it is going to get rid of clipping, so if you are not experiencing any clipping then your mix is far too quiet.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said?


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## Python Blue (Aug 8, 2013)

Vukasin said:


> EDIT: Actually, after thinking about this for a while I'm not sure how your method works exactly. A compressor pulls transients up while a limiter pushes transients down. If you're using a compressor in place of a limiter then there is no way that it is going to get rid of clipping, so if you are not experiencing any clipping then your mix is far too quiet.
> 
> Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said?



Which is why I set the compressor's attack, release, and RMS to 0; if you do that and set the compression ratio to infinity, you've essentially made a limiter.

Course, I've since found clipping with the compressor method as well, so I'm starting to run out of ideas for how to make my music louder without distortion.


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## Vukasin (Aug 8, 2013)

Python Blue said:


> Course, I've since found clipping with the compressor method as well, so I'm starting to run out of ideas for how to make my music louder without distortion.


It's impossible. However, to get it loud you can use EQ to boost the mids and high mids a bit (because are ears are most receptive to those frequencies so it will sound louder), then use saturation, and then by the time you get to the limiter you won't need to do a lot with it.


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## CedricSweetwater (Aug 8, 2013)

If you're trying to make the overall track to sound louder then you want to use a limiter which is just a compressor with a ratio set to infinite and a couple of frills. I like using iZotope Ozone 5 because it is the most legit mastering suite available on digital right now, but sometimes I'll just use the limiter in DAW to do the same thing. Meldaproductions has some reasonably priced plugins too, but basically I wouldn't limit anything more than by -8db, and you definitely don't want the track to reach -0db ever. But if there is something else wrong with the dynamics, you'll probably have to get specific with compressors on your separate tracks and make sure you know what you're doing. Setting all the parameters to 0ms will most likely make the effect too prominent and you won't always want that.

Also don't do silly things like parallel compression on the entire track (which will introduce unrepairable phase issues if you don't get the sample delay right).


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