Quote:
Originally Posted by ensemble  Hi guys,
Is it always advisable to put a limiter on the master bus to avoid clipping |
To the contrary. It's advisable not to put a limiter on the master bus during mixing. Leave that for the mastering.
A) There's no reason to "protect" the master bus by inserting a limiter, you simply lower the master bus as long as you observe the below rules, and
B) If you would like dynamic control on your master bus, a bit of wideband compression is usually a better choice, i.e. an SSL type glue compressor, but don't use it as a crutch.
If you overload the master bus and have a limiter plug-in like Waves L2 (just an example) inserted you will overload the plug-in internally. You can not control the amount of gain reduction if you're exceeding 0 dBFS on the master bus, even if you drop the master fader and it shows no clipping. Explanation continued below...
Quote:
|
or is it just better to avoid sending individual tracks to loud to the master? The second is true for sure but anyway, limiter on master-bus?
|
In a floating point system like Logic Pro it does not matter if you output too loud to the master bus and then lower it - as long as you do not have plug-ins inserted on the master bus. At least not fixed point plug-ins or dynamic ones that do not have a floating point attenuation option on the input.
You can safely drop the master output level if you're overloading on the master. Lowering your individual faders or lowering the master bus will yield 100% identical results. Naturally you need to observe the internal overload rule for outputting or sending to an aux bus, e.g. when you're sum compressing your drums on a bus.
Please notice that when I'm saying "master bus" I'm talking about the Stereo Out (Output 1-2) not the separate "Master Fader" offset fader in Logic Pro.
Quote:
|
I mix both in Ableton live and sometimes in Logic.
|
My experience with Ableton Live is limited but I remember it being very difficult to ascertain the metering overload values, though they are easily confirmed in Logic Pro.