PSP Xenon Limiter

[camerondye]

I am going to have to go try the Xenon Limiter because I just read an article that says that its pretty transparent and it rated it really well. Right now my favorite transparent Limiter is the one in Ozone3 and its pretty good IMO. Anybody try out the Xenon and also any other suggestions on transparent limiters better than Ozone3.
cam

[reid]

Xenon is lovely in my experience - utterly transparent at 'sensible' settings, and still does a good job if you get carried away. It's metering options are second to none and if you venture away from the presets it's incredibly tweakable.

[Energie]

I love the Xenon Limiter! it took just a bit to set up my settings so it was not sounding like it was pumping, but now, it is very lovely, pretty transparent, keeps the stereo image very well.

[mdoelger]

Originally Posted by Energie

I love the Xenon Limiter! it took just a bit to set up my settings so it was not sounding like it was pumping, but now, it is very lovely, pretty transparent, keeps the stereo image very well.

Could you share some kind of preset?

[Energie]

well its really source dependant, but say for using on a drum buss, I have the leveler on more, like -9 or so, and the transient percentage up more, slightly slower release. But say on a master, I don't use the leveler as much, maybe -1 or -2, helps the program material get just a little hotter and less pumping sounding to me, and the transient percentage down just a bit and a fast release.

Its a pretty neat limiter that has more then one use. so just play with some of the functions and see what it is doing to the audio.

[JPeters86]

Funny, just demo-ed it today. Sounds kinda cool. Have to dig in the manual though. Like the sound so far. Gets things loud and transparant. Nice stuff PSP. Just about all they make kicks ass.

[TheBSper]

Xenon is great. Definitely go through the manual though, since some of the labeling of the controls have different labels (the "attack" is called "transient" and measured by the percentage of the transient allowed to pass). If you're using it for a mastering application setting the transient mode to "react" works like clipping the converters, which is a very transparent trick used by plenty of notable mastering engineers. Take the time to read up on Bob Katz's metering system that they use too, it's very useful to the point that I open the Xenon on my master fader without it providing any processing just to use it's meters unless I run out of DSP.

I've generally found that for the material I'm working on my masters sound best where the transients are set in react mode with a high percentage of transient allowed to pass. I always put it in "oversample" mode so that it automatically compensates for inter-sample peaks when it predicts there might be an issue.

[Energie]

yeah

I believe the transient level is what percentage of the transients it lets get by the first limiting stage, since it works in 2 stages

love the xenon

[camerondye]

I tried the Xenon and IMO it is better than the Voxengo Elephant2 (which I actually like for tracking sometimes) for some heavy limiting on a song. I am a big lover of UAD plugs but it is better than the prec limiter. I could pick the prec limiter out everytime in a blind test because of what it does to the lows on higher limiting, kind of wooly sounding...but whatever. I like it sometimes for light limiting if I want some mojo, but at higher rates it has way too much mojo.

Here's where it gets interesting, this is the closest limiter I've heard to the Izotope Ozone Limiter and I think it is really close to it...but I don't think it beats out Ozone's loudness maximizer limiter thingy. It was really hard to tell the difference on this one and you could be great with either one, but I already own Ozone and am happy. For my money, I want improvement on the benchmark and I think Ozone is the benchmark in Transaparent Limiting IMO. I've never tried the Sonnox, and I've heard that is good also so take that into account.

Izotope Ozone has a great limiter, dither, and some other decent tools and really is a great product. I own PSP mixpack, Easyverb, Vintage Warmer 2, 608 delay (the best delay IMO), & MasterQ and they are all top notch products that rival just about everything out there (except the Easyverb, it's just ok, nice for a low CPU reverb though). The Xenon is great also, has a lot of control, and would be mine if I didn't own Ozone.
cam