The analog brickwall limiter thread

[funka]

For info, there is limiter feature in the safe sound audio products, p1 & toolbox.

[666666]

Originally Posted by mischa janisch

...The sad thing is that the I get those insane levels only from 'pros' who have been doing this for years - the project studio guys and gearslutz readers are much more level and sound concious..... try to believe that NOT everyone working at Sterling Sound or any other famous Mastering facility is a greedy, careless, music-hating monster who just gets a kick out of insanley clipping some 10.000,- USD converter in a 400.000 USD room with killer acoustics while listening to the result on the best speakers money can buy...

Interesting point... and very true. Not sure what these "pro" guys are up to... it indeed is so hard to believe that guys with known names and experience, working with perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear are churning out work that ultimately sounds like complete garbage... it's baffling.

I say this from direct experience, having recently dealt with a big name place... not Sterling, but a very "similar" place in a big city, you'd all know the name... went back and forth with the engineer over 5 times, begging to reduce clipping / limiting to get rid of very noticeable clicks, pops and crackling all over the place... and also to have at least a tiny bit of dynamics exist... in the end he just about "refused" to do it... he finally yielded one version that was just barely acceptable, at least the degree of crackling, clicks and pops came down, but dynamics still hurting... I'm guessing he perhaps backed off on the clipping but kept the brickwall limiter cranked fairly hard... this version was accepted because we were just tired of wasting time with this place, it got to the point of being a big joke, we just wanted out... then AFTER the fact, the engineer came back and was asking for us to consider yet another version which was, you guessed it, MORE limited... he apparently wasn't happy with the version WE chose, it just wasn't squashed enough for his liking... ... I'm not kidding... and this is supposed to be a top name place that charges top level bucks, etc.

Well this was surely a very enlightening learning experience. At this point I'd have way more faith in just about any experienced gearslut here, in their basement with ever modest gear, over a place like the one I dealt with... because the work coming out of the big place was so bad and so far away from any degree of "good fidelity", I just cannot imagine it being any worse. Just about anything else would be better. Sure, the average gearslut in their basement will likely not have great monitoring, etc, but I think they'd at least TRY to make the thing sound musical, and not a cracking, popping squashed nightmare. I'd much rather have a master that might be a tad off the mark in terms of the overall eq shape etc, than to have a master that is smashed to hell with digital clicks, pops and crackling all over the place.

Sorry, yet another "loudness war" rant... I know... we do not need anymore of these here... but, once every few weeks I just need to get it out of my system. Every time I hear a crushed and crackling master, it just makes my blood boil. So much good music is being RUINED out there... it's a very serious artistic crime when you really think about it. These days, any potential "Mona Lisa" that might come along essentially has ugly "graffiti" sprayed all over it by these "top level" mastering places. I'm sorry, I have zero respect for anyone who would churn out work like that, I don't care WHAT the reason is. Anyone who would take a piss on someone else's music should not be allowed to practice "mastering"... sadly, as I write this, these guys are out there pissing up a storm and collecting thousands of dollars.

Well, hats off to those mastering engineers out there who know what they're doing and stick to their guns in terms of yielding truly excellent work. In the face of all the bad work being done out there in general, we must remember that there ARE a lot of really excellent mastering engineers out there as well. But man, these "top level" mastering places are really giving "mastering" a bad name. I wonder how much longer this sickening "loudness" trend will continue.

Oh crap, I'm hijacking my own thread!....

Well, I'm done with my coffee now, back to work....

[mischa janisch]

Well - our experiences seem to vary here...

Besides our mastering facility we also have a recording studio aimed mostly at mixing (with an SSL 6056). While most of the stuff that gets mixed over there is being mastered in our own mastering room, some of it gets in the hands of other engineers as well. Since I do have acces to all those mix files, I can easily judge what those guys are doing.

A couple of albums for example have been mastered by Tom Coyne at Sterling sound. They all sound great - very musical, he did a great job! One of the albums turned out a little bright for my taste - but I'm not the artist - it's just a matter of taste... I suspect had he been asked to reduce the level he would have done so. If he would have been asked to raise the level he probably would have also done so (within reason). It's part of the job to deliver what the client wants - you can always advise against their wishes, but in the in the end you better do it if you don't want to loose your clients.

Assuming that your Mix sounded good I would say - just avoid this mastering engineer since he didn't seem to understand your needs.

I think with the rally bad sounding stuff the ugly distortion happens in the mix - as it is fairly easy to get insane levels without too many audible artefacts in mastering from almost any source material...

[wheatus]

Hello Peeps,

I was cruising this thread for user reports on the Maselec stuff...But the thread has drifted into Arms Talks and I can offer my own personal experience, having been signed to a Major Label as both artist and producer, and having worked with the big mastering engineers in them big city joints and all that.

We were signed to Columbia Records from 1999 through to 2004. Actually had some hits too...yay...that and an opinion will get you nowhere even faster.

The following are only my opinions because I was there and heard it said of my own records!!!!!!!

It comes down to this: A&R, as well as Label President and a veritable swamp of marketing slugs, and managers sometimes, all say the same thing about a track that has arcane qualities like dynamics and lower than clip city headroom....They all say: "I just can't here it on the radio!!!!"

TRANSLATION: "It doesn't already sound like it is on the radio yet." What got me into trouble time and again was that I kept blurting things out like "THAT'S 'CAUSE IT'S NOT ON THE RADIO YOU IDIOT PIGFUUUUK!!!!!".....note to aspiring artists...rebellion is very 20th Century.

These vermin, who actually take home the money that artists and engineers earn, don't know what radio compression is. They wouldn't know peak limiting if it stabbed them in the ear with a 5k icepick.

So the dutiful, well intentioned engineer who mixes or masters with radio comp in mind...we'll he's sure to loose the job....See the "PRO" has long since thrown out his novel notions of "art" and other silly things like that. "THE PRO" knows that the guy who signs the check has no ear, no concept. The guy who signs the check needs to hear it loud, squeezed and up in your face. Only when it sounds like it's already on the radio can he finally "hear it on the radio"....and the job gets paid.

This in turn has lead to a competitive loudness thing, obviously. I think it's roots can be traced all the way back to the Telecommunications Act Of 1996.

I digress....anyway....So the pro's know what to do to get these checks from these labels. Loud and limited is the money game. They are indeed killing music but the plan is to retire when the bottom falls out.

I hope that eventually we'll see Neumann lathes with $1200 BIN's on ebay. I cannot wait!

Much Love Of Dynamics and SONOMA DSD,
brendan b brown
wheatus

[iegido]

After some months dealing with ProTools plugs for dynamics, I´ve come back to the Kark-Teknik DN500, and the mixes are all under control again.

[Online-Mastering]

The Pendulum in fact works very nicely. IMHO it's a really good implementation of a brickwall in the analog domain. Depending on the material it sometimes sounds better and punchier than clipping converters, as bass impulses got more focussed and the transient spectrum remains very well. For sure it clips as well, simply because limiting IS clipping / distortion, but it does in a nice way. We often use the Pendulum on HipHop / Dance music. BUT: For 'empty' mixes with not so much going on, there are definitely better alternatives. So keep in mind: It's another option / another addtion to an arsenal of tools and NO working-wonders all-in-one solution.

[Fat larry]

We use the Masselec MLA2 as one of our comps but when needed it also doubles as a good transparant limiter.
Larry