Your Favorite Limiter Plugin?

[ryandfl]

Has anyone compared Pro-L to the new mode in Ozone-5 directly?

I finally started a demo of Pro-L a couple weeks ago but so far have been kind of disappointed in it, based on the rave reviews I've seen. It tended to produce harsher results than I'm used to in Ozone 4.

That said, switching back to Ozone 4 sounded mushy, though less 'brittle', and the almost complete lack of control was frustrating. I demoed Ozone 5 a little while ago and thought the new mode sounded really great. It was a big improvement from the other modes.

I should probably just grab the upgrade for 5 since it is only $100 and there are other a number of other enhancements too. But I would hate to get it now and realize Pro-L generally sound better and end up using Ozone less.

[Ben F]

I have Ozone 5 with Intelligent III mode but still prefer the sound of the Intelligent II limiter on a lot of music- it sounds more musical to my ears. Whilst Intelligent III can be very transparent, it sounds a bit sterile sometimes.

[Sonic Supreme]

Originally Posted by Ben F

I have Ozone 5 with Intelligent III mode but still prefer the sound of the Intelligent II limiter on a lot of music- it sounds more musical to my ears. Whilst Intelligent III can be very transparent, it sounds a bit sterile sometimes.

I thought Intelligent 1 was alot better than Intellignet 2...I thought Intellignet 2 was a step backwards for Ozone. Regardless IMHO I think Ozone sucks as a limiter altogether. To my ears it begins to sound like s_ _ _ real fast. I think the whole DC offset button on it creates a noticable low cut/hi pass filter that you can actually feel in your music if you listen carefully so you better be sure if you engage that button that you really want it "on." Although on a positive note I do believe in their Dither MBIT+ algo...it does seem to sound better than other dithers. I believe in that one and also POW-R Type 2 and sometimes i find triangular dither Type 2 good. Havnt tried Ozone 5 and dont seem to wanna care for it unless many people can convince me it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

My favorite limiters so far in no particular order of preference as they all sound good and one might fit your bill better than the other are:

1) Voxengo ELEPHant
2) Sonalksis Limiter
3) MCDSp ML-1 (Mcdsp overlooked by many--dont sleep!--they've been in plug-in game for many years)

Another good Limiter that I chose as next level down in tier but still good is Massey L-2007...Only reason is because it has bulit in automoatic hi-pass filter that slopes around 40 Hz subtle according to Massey himself. But that might be what ur music needs and u didnt know it. It has its own character but u cant push it as hard as the above.

Regardless there are many other limiter I havent tried yet...a lot of people seem to love Slate FX-G, havent tried Brainwox--that thing look complicated, Tried the Fab filter demo and I honestly believe the limiters I chose can beat out Fab filter. Flux to me sounded like ass...lol.

My 2 cents

[BT Mastering]

1 TC Electronic Brickwall Limiter
2 Fab Filter Pro
3 iZotope Ozone
4 Waves L3

[Red Mastering]

waves ??
wouldn't touch it with 2m stick... (well except maybe old l2 and rcomp - which was quite good compressor)

[HolB]

Flux - Elixir !

[kingofswing]

The PSP Xenon and the Voxengo Elephant are my two favourites, and I also like the UAD Precision Limiter on some things when it works

Ozone 5 is ok, but I found it to disturb the balance of things, not sure what it's quite doing, but didn't sound musical enough to me. It has some kind of exciter character to it, that just won't go away.

The Fab Filter Pro L was another let down for me. At first I felt wow, this is so transparent and very clear. It handles transients really well. However, after much listening, it seems to have a sound about it, and it makes things artificially wider and adds a touch of excitement in the highs. The mids also seem to thin out, not a good thing. I soon started to dislike this limiter, as it wasn't true to the source and it just made everything sound the same. The Bypass button was my little helper with this plug.

Overall any of the above plugs can be used to great effect, but it's all material dependant and down to personal taste and preference.

[Kindred]

Has anyone tried the Pro-L compared to the Sonoris? Curious how they compare

[Strut78]

Originally Posted by Kindred

Has anyone tried the Pro-L compared to the Sonoris? Curious how they compare

Do sonoris do a limiter?

[JohnnyReverb]

Limiter6 by VladG

this !

peak limiter with multiple gainstages, oversampled clipper, rms-comp, highfrequency-limiter and intersample-limiting. takes a little bit longer to configure right, but this thing ditched my sonnox, pro-l and fgx together at once.

[gregerlindberg]

Originally Posted by JohnnyReverb

Limiter6 by VladG

this !

peak limiter with multiple gainstages, oversampled clipper, rms-comp, highfrequency-limiter and intersample-limiting. takes a little bit longer to configure right, but this thing ditched my sonnox, pro-l and fgx together at once.

+ 1000000000000 on this one, it is one mean limiter... And free! u can really go load if you want to, and all transparent if u set it up right.
Back it down again, and its as load as things should be, and you wont even know its there.

[Faymus Media]

Seems like the Slate FGX and Massey L2007 are wonderful to the ears!

[ciro]

Originally Posted by gregerlindberg

+ 1000000000000 on this one, it is one mean limiter... And free! u can really go load if you want to, and all transparent if u set it up right.
Back it down again, and its as load as things should be, and you wont even know its there.

+1 !

I cannot imagine something more versatile . M/S, clipper, look ahead and more.And it "tells" you when something is wrong (distorting at any of 3 stages).

Last month I was mastering for a band that wanted it very loud .This limiter not only goes louder(when needed) but it sound as good as - or better- than my previous (DDMF No Limits) even using only the last (of 3) stage.
The songs ended with dynamic range around 6 dB, some 5 (the band love it - and I did my job).


Ciro

[sat159p1]

The only thing it misses is good dither...

[huejahfink]

Sure but most of us have no shortage of dithers.
I'd rather that it was left out rather than the dev include something that had not been fully realised and tested - purely for the sake of including it.

Sent from my LT26i using Gearslutz App

[Filthrill]

The Sonnox Limiter is a beast cuz you it has the ability to set attack & release independently. To dial in just the right punch in the final master it's indispensable. The enhance feature gets uses a lot also to add some harmonics to songs that need a lil extra mojo. The Sonnox is always my last in the chain when mastering. But for mixing references & to use on tracks or subgroups, Waves L2 & sometimes Massey L2007 but I found that the L2007 doesn't work on nearly as much things as the L2 but when it does work for something it's butter.

[edva]

Originally Posted by JohnnyReverb

Limiter6 by VladG

this !

peak limiter with multiple gainstages, oversampled clipper, rms-comp, highfrequency-limiter and intersample-limiting. takes a little bit longer to configure right, but this thing ditched my sonnox, pro-l and fgx together at once.

I like FGX, so this intrigues me. Where are you guys getting the vst to au wrapper?

[Table Of Tone]

And that's just the alpha version!

I've been playing with the artwork for the beta version which is even better and a little more straightforward to use.

Two different GUI's.
The sonic style blue one and Vlad's rather cool looking Russian military one, which has three switchable languages.
I've also made a psychedelic one just for fun of course

[Beatworld]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt;

I'm working on a mastering clipper plug-in which will hopefully be released in 2011. I can't reveal more at this point but it's a tool I believe many ME's will find useful primarily for workflow reasons, and it's designed by yours truly and programmed by a very talented coder.

Any updates on this please Lagerfeldt?

[JohnnyReverb]

Originally Posted by huejahfink

Sure but most of us have no shortage of dithers.
I'd rather that it was left out rather than the dev include something that had not been fully realised and tested - purely for the sake of including it.

Sent from my LT26i using Gearslutz App

pretty much my thoughts too. no problem to insert afterwards.

@edva
http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=5

here you get one

[Beatworld]

When I voted for Pro-L in the poll I had not tried Elephant or Xenon.
I had Sonnox, L1 and Pro-L at the time.

I've now got Toneboosters Barricade and for the last week I've had the demos of Elephant and Xenon.

I've been doing extensive A B testing with:

Pro-L
Elephant
Xenon
Barricade

Starting point : they are all GREAT limiters.
All capable of being very transparent which is what I'm after.

One interesting (to me at least) test result.

I've got the Toneboosters EBULoudness meter inserted as the very last plug on the master buss to check how accurate the output ceiling thresholds are. The EBULoudness meters include a "true peak" section.

During the tests all 4 limiters have the outputs set at -0.30 db with 5 db of gain.
I've tried to match settings between all 4 as best I can although not all have exactly the same controls.

My expectation was that none of the 4 limiters would exceed the -0.30 db output ceiling.

After repeated testing the only one which NEVER exceeds -0.30 db is Barricade.
The biggest "offender" is Xenon which sometimes hits 0.0db.

The BIG surprise is Barricade which at the princely sum of EUR 15 has to be one of THE bargains of the year.
And at another EUR 15 the EBULoudness meters are very nice.
At EUR 60 for the BusTools bundle (including ReelBus) is a no brainer.
(I have absolutely no affiliation whatsoever with Toneboosters)

[Twerk]

By chance did you have oversampling enabled on the other plugins?

[Beatworld]

Originally Posted by Twerk

By chance did you have oversampling enabled on the other plugins?

Yes.
I thought that was the best way to minimise ISP.

Is that a fundamental flaw in my tests ?

[Twerk]

No, I was thinking you might have had it off. Hmmm... I haven't used this "true peak" tool, but perhaps it's giving you the peak of a signal as if it were being decoded by a d/a. And since the plugs have oversampling enabled, you won't see anything exceed 0dBFS. Have you opened up the bounced files in an editor to see their actual output max?

[John T]

UAD Precision Limiter

[Beatworld]

Originally Posted by Twerk

No, I was thinking you might have had it off. Hmmm... I haven't used this "true peak" tool, but perhaps it's giving you the peak of a signal as if it were being decoded by a d/a. And since the plugs have oversampling enabled, you won't see anything exceed 0dBFS. Have you opened up the bounced files in an editor to see their actual output max?

I haven't bounced any files.
I've just been testing what is going on in real time.
I take the point, perhaps bounced they will look ok.

Still it seems odd to me that the ceiling is being crossed in real time with 4x oversampling on.

I've also tried the tests with a few other meters now and I don't get the same results. Basically nothing exceeds -0.3 db.
But none of my other meters are particularly cutting edge, just Nugen Visualiser, Waves Paz stuff, Logic meters plugin.

At this stage I conclude that the Toneboosters EBULoudness meter true peak reading is more sensitive/accurate than the other meters I have.

Barricade has ISP/ ITU-R BS.1770 compliant ‘true peak’ detection with high-frequency under-read correction.

[stinkyfingers]

try that test again without oversampling...
oversampling/upsampling "causes" ("exposes") ISPs...

edit: ...i'm using different meters and source material...
and i use these as AU in Logic so there may be bugs...

[Beatworld]

Originally Posted by stinkyfingers

try that test again without oversampling...
oversampling/upsampling "causes" ("exposes") ISPs...

Test done again with oversampling off on Pro-L, Xenon and Elephant.

Results worse, certainly not better.

In fact some readings on EBULoudness meter showing positive values.
For example +0.6 (Elephant) with the output threshold still at -0.3db.

PS: Barricade's secret weapon seems to be the ISP switch.
Turn that off and the results are on a par with the other 3, i.e.: over the -0.3db ceiling.
Turn the ISP switch on and the output NEVER exceeds the output ceiling of -0.3 db.

[bmanic]

You need to do some careful listening. Turning the ISP switch on in Barricade changes the way it sounds quite clearly. It probably introduces larger look a head and hold values internally, thus preventing inter sample overs, in combination with some oversampling (not necessarily needed, depending on the amount of look-a-head/hold).

You can force Pro-L to be 100% secure as well by simply using longer look-a-head times. Set look-a-head to zero and no matter how much you oversample it can introduce overs (because it's basically clipping the first few samples).

Set Pro-L look-a-head to 0.5ms and 4x oversampling and you will have to do quite a bit of abuse until it spits out inter-sample overs.

Same goes for Voxengo Elephant, there is a control called transient-time or something like that and setting it to default values usually results in no overs when you have oversampling on.

Cheers!
bManic

[Beatworld]

Originally Posted by bmanic

You need to do some careful listening. Turning the ISP switch on in Barricade changes the way it sounds quite clearly. It probably introduces larger look a head and hold values internally, thus preventing inter sample overs, in combination with some oversampling (not necessarily needed, depending on the amount of look-a-head/hold)
Cheers!
bManic

Thanks for your feedback.

I'm thinking you find switching on ISP in Barricade is detrimental to the sound when you say it changes the sound "quite clearly".
I've been using it with the ISP switch on pretty much all the time.
Will have to do more testing to fully appreciate the difference with it off.
It is in the subtle range of differences for me.
There are no external over sampling options in Barricade but you think there may be some going on under the hood with the ISP switch on?

Setting oversampling to 8x in Elephant seems to make it safe. I had only tried 4x before.
And then I downloaded the Nugen VisLM loudness meter demo and the true peak results were slightly different to the TB EBULoudness meters !
Barricade hit -0.2 sometimes even with ISP on.

So the next question probably relates to ITU/EBU/ATSC "true peak" metering.....why aren't the results the same in different plugins ?