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Hi..
umm.. me again..
Just looking at the sony oxford products and it seems that the bundles come with the eq, the dynamics and the inflator plugin. None of the bundles seem to come with the limiter - which i would have thought would be more desirable.
So what is the difference between an inflator and a limiter?
thanks in advance..
- james
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Good question James. I'm a big proponent of the Sonnox stuff, got the Dynamics a while ago and use it all the time.
The inflator is a pretty unique device, there really isn't anything out there that does the same process. It's affecting the density of the mix and adding some harmonics similar to analog saturation. So this does result in louder mixes but it's not operating the same as a limiter with a threshold and time domain attack and release parameters. What this is good for is getting hotter level without directly affecting the dynamics, although they will be affected by virtue of the saturation going on. It's a somewhat difficult process to explain actually, as the manual states:
"Because the Inflator does not employ signal compression there is no ‘pumping’, dynamic level changes, loss of presence or flattening of percussive attacks. The full dynamic information of the music is largely preserved despite the increase in average modulation density."
As an example the manual also states that even white noise can me made to sound louder, or any material no matter how much its been compressed or limited previously, not that this would always sound good ;-)
The limiter on the other hand gives you a lot more control over the dynamics of the mix, in fact it's probably the most flexible limiter out there. In fact because of this a lot of people dismiss it as not sounding good when generally its operator error due to not understanding how it works that's the issue.
They've really tried to allow you to not only gain louder level but also retain some snap to the transients by a special process that mixes enhanced transients back into the material. Another great feature is the recon meter which shows you reconstruction levels which is the true output coming out of your converter.
What happens with a digital signal is that the stairstep you see in a DAW programs waveform display gets filtered and rounded off to resemble an analog waveform. By doing this though there are cases where sample levels that were at 0dbFS are now reconstructed above 0 and therefore are clipping. So even though your DAW might tell you that you are only peaking at 0 the actual level coming out the DA can be higher.
The recon meter in the Sonnox limiter shows you this so you can create masters that don't include what's reffered to as 'illegal' levels, or clipped reconstructed samples.
As with all the Sonnox stuff you really want to have them all ;-)
The inflator is a good way to just bring up the density and thickness of a track as well as add some harmonic distortion to things like basslines or synths, think thicken and more full here. The limiter gives you ultimate control over the final output of your stereo buss and can actually make things sound better unlike a lot of limiters that are only really degrading the sound as they limit it. It can add a nice crispness to drum groups as well, or the whole mix for that matter.
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Wow, thanks for the explanation. Maybe i will keep hunting for a bigger bundle.. :-)
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Hmm.. So would you literally have eq + compression + inflator + limiter on the master output?
Or would the combination of an inflator & limiter squash the life out of the track?
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I wouldn't use both the limiter and inflator. It's better to use the limiter on the master buss as it allows proper peak control (intersample peaks as well) where as the inflator wasn't designed for this. If you use both you prob will squash too much.
On a side note I don't use an eq on the master either.
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What's an intersample peak?
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Well when you see the waveforms on your screen that isn't whats output to the converters, it has to be 'reconstructed' first. This essentialy smooths out the waves so they arent jagged but has the effect of sometimes increasing their amplitude beyond what's displayed on the screen/digital meters.
An intersample peak limiter function corrects this so that you aren't sending out what's known as 'illegal' values, ie ones that clip at the converter stage (even though your digital meter will show it just at 0dbFS)
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Let's keep those values legal, by all means.
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haven't used the sonnox stuff, but I just came across this from SSL this morning.
Seems like it would help for Intersample peaks.
http://www.solid-state-logic.com/music/X-ISM.html
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