Limiters -how to set it properly

[przechuy]

Hi lads.

Basically ,i use oxford limiter ,and i only,ONLY rely on those fabric presets,using mostly preset called "classic"

And actually i never interested too much into how is every single thing there set and why when i picked this preset.It just sounded ok for me.

But now i read and read and read and i found out for example on Laidback Luke's forum a post by himself about Limiter and "loudness war"

So there's a secret as well, I can tell you it myself as I found out myself. Try and find a limiter that actually has a gain that goes above 0db!
When it comes to gain reduction, what ever sounds nice and still dynamic. And it shouldn't sound open all of a sudden when the kick is out.
Don't know those settings by head. You should set the release so it pumps up and down like the hihats. So nothing too short, can't tell
you the actual setting because I got that one from the Swedes.

and at this point,when he writes about release i never wondered how it is set in my limiter...

damn.


Can any experienced user,medway,sven hauck or anyone who has good experience explain me bit more with usage of limiter and his release?

How it affects mix?

(I have in mind limiter on mastering bus)

Maybe Medway as You posted presets for oxford dynamics,could you also recommend,post some presets for oxford limiter? (i guess You use it also if you use oxford dynamics?)


I would like to exploit and exhaust topic of limiters .

By this time i learned that it improoves volume level of your track and also can bring up some transparency,depends from limiters (voxengo elephant seems to really bring transparence )

[admin]

I mainly use the limiter just for catching peaks and not going over 0. It almost sounds like Luke is advocating raising the output past 0 and clipping. This actually will sound cleaner and louder but for me it's a no no with mastering as I wouldn't serve someone with a master that was clipped.

In the past I've experimented with clipping bit in order to make sure no DAs are getting gritty sounding I've kept to making sure all my output levels are legal.

In fact I just bought Steve Angello's Isabel on wav and notice it has clipping in it. According to Luke he's getting settings from the Swede's so this makes sense about what he's saying to do with the limiter.

[przechuy]

BTW Isabel is amazing tune.

Yesterday i was touring in clubs and @ 3 am i got on party where guy dropped when asked all last 3 tracks of pryda and it obviously blasted the dancefloor.


If i understand correctly,You say that You would not do mastering on a track that clips ?Or maybe if you were them you wouldnt release such track?


I am not to keen with what actually clipping does to You track ,i mean i know basis of it,but never wondered how much it can affect track.

from wikipedia

-The extra signal which is beyond the capability of the amplifier is simply cut off, resulting in a sine wave becoming a distorted squarewave type waveform.


and something interesting

In the frequency domain, clipping produces harmonics at higher frequencies than the input signal. Extra high-frequency weighting of a signal is more likely to damage tweeters than a signal that was not clipped as higher high frequency power levels are delivered to the tweeter. However, most loudspeakers are designed to handle signals with abundant high frequencies, like cymbal crashes, which have a greater high-pitch frequency weighting than amplifier clipping could produce.[citation needed] Therefore damage attributable to this characteristic is rare.

* When applied to a musical signal, the clipping may prevent a note from decaying in a normal amount of time. This can cause rapidly played notes to blend together.[citation needed]
* Music which is clipped experiences amplitude compression, whereby all notes begin to sound equally loud because loud notes are being clipped to the same output level as softer notes.









and btw i remember i tihnk Angello in one video saying "clipping is good" :Just a curio,it was angello i think or laidback luke



"sound cleaner and louder"

That sounds interesting.
But,You say Medway that you would not decide to do mastering on a track that is clipping?


I have just made a short loop with gated synth and kick and at the end of my master chain i put voxengo elephant and i increased output gain on 3.4 DB instead of 0. If i went more with db kick became noticeably distorted .And i found that on this kick it is a limit bareer when it sounds good and not yet distorted.

Kick seems to be more punchier .

But the meter showing clipping accidents raises so fast that i probably have no idea how to name such number

[przechuy]

And i am terribly sorry for chaotic look of my post.I know i suck in it totally.But i think we are at the point of extremely interesting discussion

[admin]

Clipping short transients like drums can give you the gain without the side effects of a limiter which is slower to respond since clipping is instant. Some limiters even have clipping modes like Ozone to mimick this. Once you get to pads and vocals though this sort of clipping sounds bad fast. So depending on the track there is a point to where you can hard clip and not hear anything that bad happening.

In my experience you can get as hot and clean as you need without it though so I go that route. I would not want to give someone a master with clipping in case it distorts on a lower end system that can't handle the overs. I also make sure I don't have intersample peaks which don't even show on regular meters but can also result in distorting bad DA's.

About 99% of stuff out there I see has intersample peak distortion there is only one guy I know that doesn't.

When played in the club maybe this stuff doesn't matter too much but I like to do it just in case.

If you also listen to Pyrda's Lift the snare is distorting a bit it sounds like and overall really squashed sounding.

A friend of mine told me of this track that supposedly sounded amazing out but when I listened to it in the studio is more surprised to see how clipped and distorted it was. Seemed like one of the worse mastering jobs I had heard yet she swore in the club it sounded loud and clean.

[przechuy]

Thats the point here surely.


It is the effect of mixing into already pre made mastering chain.They really make those tracks often on laptops and headphones on their most probably almost default setup of mastering chain (almost default,because as you pointed,it cant work on every kind of track) in order to test potential new tune/loop few hours later in a club or because just of lack of time.
I also remember Laidback Luke stating once on his board that earlier he used to make tracks in 2-3 week spent on each track.Now when he moved into this direction he makes tracks in 4 hours mixing into mastering chain....


On one forum there was promotor ,or something like that,i think he was helping in organizig a gig where they played,and he wrote that he seen them making a track in few hours and later testing it on gig .

Quality suffers.

It is not that sexy like Yours tracks and Sven's (heliopause) etc ,it is not polished,it is not perfect in terms of quality,it is made with one purpose - work on dancefloor.

[Waylo]

can we address the attack and release settings---

I've heard many different viewpoints.

Let's say for a typical 127 bpm house/techno track... what's a good starting point?

Sometimes someone needs to show you what's optimal so that you can learn to tweak from there....

[admin]

I can see if they are making them quickly then perhaps clipping is easier.

Interestingly though as a test I purposely mastered my latest release lower in volume to see the results of the reactions. One of them was similar to Gui Borato/Dusty Kid and the other was 80's italo. Both have got great response in fact one of the best reactions was from Luke himself. No one seems to have complained with it being a little lower in volume

[admin]

can we address the attack and release settings---

I've heard many different viewpoints.

Let's say for a typical 127 bpm house/techno track... what's a good starting point?

Sometimes someone needs to show you what's optimal so that you can learn to tweak from there....

I generally don't factor in release times with limiters as I use them for just catching peaks. So the attack and release are set to be very quick. The quicker the more transparent but also more distortion when you limit harder. Slower attack and release will give smoother results with higher gain reduction but will also 'compress' the signal more. It's a trade off.

When I set release times for comps so I sometimes use the delay time calculator to figure them out, either 8th or 4th settings.

http://www.medwaystudios.com/onlinetutorials.html

[przechuy]

Damn,i just figured out that this calculator actually might be extremely useful (suddenly my sidechain compressor really started to glue what i needed)
Sometimes it is hardest to learn those most easy things.

And this board is a gold mine of knowledge.