FINALLY someone who knows what they are talking about without all the bullshit most of these other "youtubers" are dishing out. As an added bonus your voice doesnt annoy the fuck out of me :)🤣
Wow! Thanks! Pardon the late response, I'm not getting email notifications for messages lately. Hmmm. Anyway, thanks so much. I always want to be truthful in my reviews, glad you like my voice too, haha. Cheers!
I picked this one up immediately. Anything to make my mastering game easier. I have many of their other smart plugins and while i dont use them all the time i often use them on submix channels. I have plugin alliance emulations too which i like to also use for their sound as well as izotope so I do a lot of mixing and matching. Im probably going to toss this on the end of my mastering chain with all of my other mastering effects i use. I have them all set to off and turn them on as needed.
In my opinion as an automatic tool it’s very good, but remember it’s just giving you a starting point to tweak, when you then do that properly then it’s exceptional and transparent but still capable of bass control and saturation, and with distortion monitoring it’s an amazing tool
I agree, it's a good idea to adjust the settings, because I think many users will simply look to smart limit as an automatic solution. I do use smart limit's automatic settings when I'm exporting quick mixes to listen to on the road. But I would always take a careful look at the settings for a real master. And Paul Third did point out an aliasing issue with the saturation, so I tend to avoid it. Cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios I always Master in 96k, this alleviates aliasing problems, apart from anything who says aliasing is bad, it’s a new „colour“ to add into the mixing/mastering pallet
@@palebluedotstudios the lack of oversampling is the main feature I see missing vs the pro L2. hopefully in a future release. I just tried it on a few mixes, and I am absolutely stunned at how it sounds so good, so fast, and is quickly and easily tweakable with very useful features. Let alone for the cost. Great, insightful review and comments. Thank you.
Smart limit opened up more with your A/B at the end with comparing to L2, not louder, but opened, at least with that material.. starting at 11:44 re listen do you hear it?
I agree with that practice, because you still get a master that can still hold up against CD-masters, or any platform that doesn't hit a modern LUFS standard (like TikTok). But I do wish there was an option for Smart:limit to hit that LUFS target, which would be ideal for broadcast where things have to hit precisely the LUFS standard. That would be really handy in my line of work. Thanks!
Awesome! Sonible seems to be killing it with these smart plugins. Have you checked out Focusrite and Sonible's FAST plugins? They're very beginner friendly.
@@TannerDavies Ha! Good call. I really like how they can be a great learning tool for beginners, then they can switch to the detailed view and they're full mixing effects.
I love this limiter. I have been using it. The only problem is the aliasing and I am having inconsistent true peaks. I bounced two masters today. Had the limiter set to -1. In RX Pro using loudness control, the true peak of both was -.9. At first, the opposite was happening, I was setting it to -1 and was getting a true peak of -1.1. Weird...... I have sent emails in and they said they were aware of the Aliasing and working on a fix. It's a great limiter. I just don't use the saturation and I'm not really worried about .1dB hahaha. Even at -.9 everything will convert just fine when the streaming services do their thing.
That's good news that they're working on the oversampling. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been updated with that yet, but who knows...in the meantime, we could use things like MetaPlugin to oversample. Cheers!
The launch price is only 65 Euro if you already own a sonible product! Even cheaper than the launch price they gave me! Wow. The more I use it, the more I love it.*Note: the Pro-L 2 test was just a quick and dirty gain match; will test more carefully soon. What did you think?
Hey, thanks so much for the review. To avoid any confusion, everyone who has a sonible plug-in registered in their user area on our website, is logged in and goes to the shop does get smart:limit for € 65;- It's our way to say: Thanks a lot to our loyal customers. The official intro offer though is € 89,- (regular price is 129,-)
Just demo'd it and there's a lot to like about Smart Limit. It sounded great and some of the features seem pretty useful in a pinch. However, it was much more CPU heavy than Pro L2 on my 12-core Mac (not sure why), and I also was getting gain reduction showing up in the Smart Limiter metering with the input gain at 0dB and with the ceiling at 0dB...which is really weird. I emailed Sonible support about this. Haven't heard back yet.
Since it has its own internal learning architecture (presumably some type of FFT spectral system) and Pro L is just a (really good) traditional broadband limiter, I'm not surprised to see extra CPU usage from smart limit. Definitely not a casual tracking limiter, haha. As for gain reduction at 0dB, all I can think is that your channel's input must be loud enough to trigger gain reduction? I'm not seeing GR here unless I really drive the input with loud peaks.
Yeah, very interesting review, thanks for this. Definitely seems a great tool for beginners. So I guess the obvious comparison would be ozone as that’s a lot of people’s quick limiting tool in the industry for a “quick bounce.” Especially ozone advanced as that has IMO the most transparent algorithms. I can already see that this has way more presets than Ozone’s maximiser. Also I know fabfilter pro-l has a lot of different modes/algorithms love to know how they stack up? Just thoughts if you come back to this plug-in. Fab filters pro-l has a great reputation too, could be just great I think if you do the best job you could with fabfilter than put the smart limit on. Surely your taste as a mix/master engineer differs from what an algorithm suggests. But it does look like a great tool. + the fact it sounded quite smooth when pushed hard (i mean on UA-cam), means it seems great. Thank you for the review.
I like that idea, though: get the best master I can with Pro-L (or other limiter of choice), then activate smart:limit. I'll definitely do a deeper comparison soon, that was a quick one while I was rushing to meet the release deadline. And Ozone is a good comparison, it's got the "Learn Threshold" feature. Personally, I found it rarely got it right, especially for a loud master. But it is of course a great maximizer, with plenty of detection flavours. What I like about Ozone vs smart:limit is that it tries to MEET your output target, whereas smart:limit just gives you a very loud master, which you are supposed to turn down manually. I think that deserves a video too, come to think of it... Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions! And thanks for watching!
Great breakdown, as I have come to expect from your channel. One thing I was about to point out (although someone else in the comments beat me to it) was the slight discrepancy in Output level between Smart Limit/Pro-L - still a good comparison, nonetheless. Something present in a plethora of limiters which I seem to be missing in Smart Limit is the option to apply Dither - have you noticed such a feature thus far? Thanks.
Thanks! Yes, someone pointed out the slight difference in output, good call. I meant to mention that this was a quick comparison, just to see how they stacked up. I might do a more precise comparison soon! As for dither, no mention of that in the manual. I'll ask the devs about that, I have a couple questions for them. Thanks again for watching!
@@palebluedotstudios Fantastic. Not a deal breaker for sure, but a lack of dither functionality does seem like quite a glaring omission for such a comprehensive limiter. Keep up the great work!
I would like to come back to the optimization of the master's at -14dB LUFS. As you say in other topics, this limiter doesn't adjust the gain structure to meet that target. Also is it possible to adjust final LUFS with out gain button (right back) ? Thanks a lot for your advice
You are most welcome! You know, I find this output gain to be the strangest thing. As far as I know, the only way to adjust the final LUFS is with the output gain in the bottom-right corner. And if you turn this down to meet the -14 LUFS target, “Quality Check” will warn you that this is too quiet! So it's really designed to over-deliver on loudness. I'd prefer to have the choice to do that or not, and especially for broadcast delivery. So to sum up: I'm not aware of any control over the gain staging other than input gain and output gain. I'm still waiting to hear back from sonible if they plan to change this at all. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@palebluedotstudios It is probably preferable to modify the output gain, because in this case the work of the limiter is not affected, unlike the modification of input gain ?
Why is everyone so impressed with Pro-L, anything is the Pro-L killer, that limiter ruins transients & sounds more digital than anything else I've used. By far the most overrated plugin in the game. You can even hear it in this comparison, nothing screams "cheap home mastering" like Pro-L. Sonible is dope. The BX Masterdesk is my go-to limiter, sounds Analog AF.
I don’t get the fab filter mania, tried them and always had a feeling something was „off“ with them, hard to describe, something was just not right, function and GUI were great, but the sound, somehow…..not right, artificial
Why would a smart limiter like this tell you to push and push until it's -9lufs when you've already set Spotify as your yardstick which specifies -14lufs???
I found that a little odd myself. I would have loved to see a button that made it "smartly" hit the exact integrated LUFS standard (very useful for broadcast), and then turn it off if you want the loud master. But keep in mind that -9 LUFS is generally considered a good target for one single master that you can deliver to all formats, including, for example, CD, which historically has much louder targets. Spotify, UA-cam, et al., will just push it down to match their max level. Thanks for watching!
@@oinkooink Haha, I hear you. What genre? You may want to rely on more compression, limiting, and/or saturation in the mix so the limiter doesn't have to clamp down on peaks so hard. But if it's a lighter genre, then you probably don't want it at -9 LUFS anyway!
@@palebluedotstudios I dunno the genre. Just guitar, bass, drums, vocals, organ music etc. Maybe like T Rex. My problem is my ears. I just don't have an experienced ear at this point. That and my room is small and poor. Oh and arrangement and performance. I have the complete set of problems. Thanks though!
@@oinkooink I see! Cool, well, keep on plugging away! In that case, yeah, I really think smart limit should have an option to just hit that -14 LUFS target, instead of pushing it to -9. Cheers!
incomprehensible review, switches around so fast there's no time to know or process what's going on. I've watched three other reviewers of Sonible EQ3 and they did the same thing so maybe it's just me but,jeeze, can everyone slow down enough to let us hear the differences?
Thanks for the feedback! I tend to switch pretty quickly, that's just how my brain works, but I can see places in this video where I could take more time. Cheers, and thanks for watching!
Gracias
De nada! Thanks for watching!
FINALLY someone who knows what they are talking about without all the bullshit most of these other "youtubers" are dishing out. As an added bonus your voice doesnt annoy the fuck out of me :)🤣
Wow! Thanks! Pardon the late response, I'm not getting email notifications for messages lately. Hmmm. Anyway, thanks so much. I always want to be truthful in my reviews, glad you like my voice too, haha. Cheers!
What an excellent review, thoroughly enjoyed it. I definitely will be purchasing this limiter. Keep up the great work🏅🎶🎶👌🏼
I love to hear that, it means so much! Yeah, you can't go wrong with smart:limit. It's a miracle. Cheers!
I just bought the whole Studio set... Love all the plugins!
Amazing! Yes, you can't go wrong with Sonible now, and smart:EQ 4 is a substantial update! Cheers, and thanks for watching!
I picked this one up immediately. Anything to make my mastering game easier. I have many of their other smart plugins and while i dont use them all the time i often use them on submix channels. I have plugin alliance emulations too which i like to also use for their sound as well as izotope so I do a lot of mixing and matching. Im probably going to toss this on the end of my mastering chain with all of my other mastering effects i use. I have them all set to off and turn them on as needed.
Sounds good! Is Izotope your favourite limiter?
In my opinion as an automatic tool it’s very good, but remember it’s just giving you a starting point to tweak, when you then do that properly then it’s exceptional and transparent but still capable of bass control and saturation, and with distortion monitoring it’s an amazing tool
I agree, it's a good idea to adjust the settings, because I think many users will simply look to smart limit as an automatic solution. I do use smart limit's automatic settings when I'm exporting quick mixes to listen to on the road. But I would always take a careful look at the settings for a real master. And Paul Third did point out an aliasing issue with the saturation, so I tend to avoid it. Cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios I always Master in 96k, this alleviates aliasing problems, apart from anything who says aliasing is bad, it’s a new „colour“ to add into the mixing/mastering pallet
@@murraywebster1228 Ah, good call, mastering at 96k. Nothing to worry about, then!
@@palebluedotstudios less, not nothing…
@@palebluedotstudios the lack of oversampling is the main feature I see missing vs the pro L2. hopefully in a future release. I just tried it on a few mixes, and I am absolutely stunned at how it sounds so good, so fast, and is quickly and easily tweakable with very useful features. Let alone for the cost. Great, insightful review and comments. Thank you.
Smart limit opened up more with your A/B at the end with comparing to L2, not louder, but opened, at least with that material.. starting at 11:44 re listen do you hear it?
I do hear it. smart:limit is definitely doing more than just limiting. It's still my favourite limiter of all time. Thanks for watching!
@@palebluedotstudios Yes sir ...thx for the vid.
@@sword-and-shieldThanks for watching! :)
this review is GREAT. i subscribed.
Awesome! Thanks so much! That means a lot. And thanks for getting me closer to 2k subs!
Great limiter.
I'll download it & test it against my Pro-L2.
Please do! I find it a little more transparent than Pro-L, but just barely.
Impressive! I didn't know it. I believe it is the best limiter on the market these days. Congratulations! Great video!
Thank you so much! It's definitely going to top a few lists this year!
Sonible says not to worry about LUFS, just make sure your range/volume are balanced and Spotify et al will make the adjustment. Do you agree?
I agree with that practice, because you still get a master that can still hold up against CD-masters, or any platform that doesn't hit a modern LUFS standard (like TikTok). But I do wish there was an option for Smart:limit to hit that LUFS target, which would be ideal for broadcast where things have to hit precisely the LUFS standard. That would be really handy in my line of work. Thanks!
Smart Limit is also great on busses and some individual tracks. Great review video!
Thank you so much! I agree. The saturation is killer on drums. Be warned that it has relatively high latency, if it matters! Thanks for watching!!
@@palebluedotstudiosgreat tip! Happy holidays!
Same to you, my friend!
Awesome! Sonible seems to be killing it with these smart plugins. Have you checked out Focusrite and Sonible's FAST plugins? They're very beginner friendly.
I'm glad you asked! I'm currently working on a review of the FAST stuff. Spoiler alert: I kinda like them...
Haha I had a feeling you'd like them! I like the compressor especially.
@@TannerDavies Ha! Good call. I really like how they can be a great learning tool for beginners, then they can switch to the detailed view and they're full mixing effects.
Would be cool to hear from you about when someone should reach for FAST plugins over Sonible's smart plugins 👍
@@TannerDavies That thought occurred to me too. It's like, "do I watch Sony Spider-Man, or Marvel Spider-Man?"....
I love this limiter. I have been using it. The only problem is the aliasing and I am having inconsistent true peaks. I bounced two masters today. Had the limiter set to -1. In RX Pro using loudness control, the true peak of both was -.9. At first, the opposite was happening, I was setting it to -1 and was getting a true peak of -1.1. Weird......
I have sent emails in and they said they were aware of the Aliasing and working on a fix. It's a great limiter. I just don't use the saturation and I'm not really worried about .1dB hahaha. Even at -.9 everything will convert just fine when the streaming services do their thing.
Can the artist and audience hear the aliasing?.
@@thegroove2000 I sure can hahahaha. I heard it then checked in plugin doctor.
That's good news that they're working on the oversampling. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been updated with that yet, but who knows...in the meantime, we could use things like MetaPlugin to oversample. Cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios Shit, that was a year ago hahaha!! Who knows, they were probably just shutting me up. 🤣
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer Yeah, big apologies for the late reply! Google hasn't been sending me message notifications for a year! 😂
The launch price is only 65 Euro if you already own a sonible product! Even cheaper than the launch price they gave me! Wow. The more I use it, the more I love it.*Note: the Pro-L 2 test was just a quick and dirty gain match; will test more carefully soon. What did you think?
Hey, thanks so much for the review. To avoid any confusion, everyone who has a sonible plug-in registered in their user area on our website, is logged in and goes to the shop does get smart:limit for € 65;- It's our way to say: Thanks a lot to our loyal customers. The official intro offer though is € 89,- (regular price is 129,-)
@@SonibleCom Ah! That makes sense why some of us got that price! Thank you!
Just demo'd it and there's a lot to like about Smart Limit. It sounded great and some of the features seem pretty useful in a pinch. However, it was much more CPU heavy than Pro L2 on my 12-core Mac (not sure why), and I also was getting gain reduction showing up in the Smart Limiter metering with the input gain at 0dB and with the ceiling at 0dB...which is really weird. I emailed Sonible support about this. Haven't heard back yet.
Since it has its own internal learning architecture (presumably some type of FFT spectral system) and Pro L is just a (really good) traditional broadband limiter, I'm not surprised to see extra CPU usage from smart limit. Definitely not a casual tracking limiter, haha.
As for gain reduction at 0dB, all I can think is that your channel's input must be loud enough to trigger gain reduction? I'm not seeing GR here unless I really drive the input with loud peaks.
Intersample peaking
Great video , thanks:)
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!
Nice review. All the best.
Thanks Pedro! The same to you!
Yeah, very interesting review, thanks for this. Definitely seems a great tool for beginners.
So I guess the obvious comparison would be ozone as that’s a lot of people’s quick limiting tool in the industry for a “quick bounce.” Especially ozone advanced as that has IMO the most transparent algorithms. I can already see that this has way more presets than Ozone’s maximiser.
Also I know fabfilter pro-l has a lot of different modes/algorithms love to know how they stack up? Just thoughts if you come back to this plug-in. Fab filters pro-l has a great reputation too, could be just great I think if you do the best job you could with fabfilter than put the smart limit on. Surely your taste as a mix/master engineer differs from what an algorithm suggests.
But it does look like a great tool. + the fact it sounded quite smooth when pushed hard (i mean on UA-cam), means it seems great. Thank you for the review.
I like that idea, though: get the best master I can with Pro-L (or other limiter of choice), then activate smart:limit. I'll definitely do a deeper comparison soon, that was a quick one while I was rushing to meet the release deadline.
And Ozone is a good comparison, it's got the "Learn Threshold" feature. Personally, I found it rarely got it right, especially for a loud master. But it is of course a great maximizer, with plenty of detection flavours. What I like about Ozone vs smart:limit is that it tries to MEET your output target, whereas smart:limit just gives you a very loud master, which you are supposed to turn down manually. I think that deserves a video too, come to think of it...
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions! And thanks for watching!
Really handy limiter. I think I will buy it. How names the track ID of that synth wave kind track in the background?
Glad you like it! It's actually just my own stuff I'm working on. I'm gonna publish a palebluedot playlist soon though. Stay tuned! And thanks again!
Good review good plug-in good work bro
Cheers. Thanks for watching!
nice
Thanks so much! Cheers!
Pro-L threshold is at 0, you used -1 on Smart-limit, that explains the level difference.
Anyway, great review :)
Mmm... You mean the output ceiling of the Pro-L is at -0.3db and output ceiling on the Smart Limit is at -1.0db right?!
You're right! I have it at -0.30 by default. This wasn't meant to be a precise comparison, just a general stress test! But good call.
That's right. Nick is correct, I did not match the true peak ceiling. That's cool, it was just a quick test. I might do a deeper comparison soon.
Great breakdown, as I have come to expect from your channel. One thing I was about to point out (although someone else in the comments beat me to it) was the slight discrepancy in Output level between Smart Limit/Pro-L - still a good comparison, nonetheless.
Something present in a plethora of limiters which I seem to be missing in Smart Limit is the option to apply Dither - have you noticed such a feature thus far? Thanks.
Thanks! Yes, someone pointed out the slight difference in output, good call. I meant to mention that this was a quick comparison, just to see how they stacked up. I might do a more precise comparison soon! As for dither, no mention of that in the manual. I'll ask the devs about that, I have a couple questions for them. Thanks again for watching!
@@palebluedotstudios Fantastic. Not a deal breaker for sure, but a lack of dither functionality does seem like quite a glaring omission for such a comprehensive limiter.
Keep up the great work!
@@SteliosMusic Agreed! And thanks so much! I shalllllll!
I would like to come back to the optimization of the master's at -14dB LUFS. As you say in other topics, this limiter doesn't adjust the gain structure to meet that target. Also is it possible to adjust final LUFS with out gain button (right back) ? Thanks a lot for your advice
You are most welcome! You know, I find this output gain to be the strangest thing. As far as I know, the only way to adjust the final LUFS is with the output gain in the bottom-right corner. And if you turn this down to meet the -14 LUFS target, “Quality Check” will warn you that this is too quiet! So it's really designed to over-deliver on loudness. I'd prefer to have the choice to do that or not, and especially for broadcast delivery. So to sum up: I'm not aware of any control over the gain staging other than input gain and output gain. I'm still waiting to hear back from sonible if they plan to change this at all. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@palebluedotstudios It is probably preferable to modify the output gain, because in this case the work of the limiter is not affected, unlike the modification of input gain ?
@@jeanyves4699 Yes, exactly. I'm just surprised you can't set it to MATCH the exact LUFS average output target.
@@palebluedotstudios Yes I can do it and this is the solution I adopted in using Sonible Smart Limit ... just to know if it was the right method.
@@jeanyves4699 Yes that's it exactly!
Why is everyone so impressed with Pro-L, anything is the Pro-L killer, that limiter ruins transients & sounds more digital than anything else I've used. By far the most overrated plugin in the game. You can even hear it in this comparison, nothing screams "cheap home mastering" like Pro-L. Sonible is dope. The BX Masterdesk is my go-to limiter, sounds Analog AF.
Yes, Pro-L isn't always the best choice, plenty of options out there now! BX Masterdesk does sound great and I love the resonance filters.
I don’t get the fab filter mania, tried them and always had a feeling something was „off“ with them, hard to describe, something was just not right, function and GUI were great, but the sound, somehow…..not right, artificial
Why would a smart limiter like this tell you to push and push until it's -9lufs when you've already set Spotify as your yardstick which specifies -14lufs???
I found that a little odd myself. I would have loved to see a button that made it "smartly" hit the exact integrated LUFS standard (very useful for broadcast), and then turn it off if you want the loud master. But keep in mind that -9 LUFS is generally considered a good target for one single master that you can deliver to all formats, including, for example, CD, which historically has much louder targets. Spotify, UA-cam, et al., will just push it down to match their max level. Thanks for watching!
@@palebluedotstudios Yeah good point. Although with my mixing skills if I push any of my mixes to - 9lufs it turns into a bloodbath.
@@oinkooink Haha, I hear you. What genre? You may want to rely on more compression, limiting, and/or saturation in the mix so the limiter doesn't have to clamp down on peaks so hard. But if it's a lighter genre, then you probably don't want it at -9 LUFS anyway!
@@palebluedotstudios I dunno the genre. Just guitar, bass, drums, vocals, organ music etc. Maybe like T Rex. My problem is my ears. I just don't have an experienced ear at this point. That and my room is small and poor. Oh and arrangement and performance. I have the complete set of problems. Thanks though!
@@oinkooink I see! Cool, well, keep on plugging away! In that case, yeah, I really think smart limit should have an option to just hit that -14 LUFS target, instead of pushing it to -9. Cheers!
incomprehensible review, switches around so fast there's no time to know or process what's going on. I've watched three other reviewers of Sonible EQ3 and they did the same thing so maybe it's just me but,jeeze, can everyone slow down enough to let us hear the differences?
Thanks for the feedback! I tend to switch pretty quickly, that's just how my brain works, but I can see places in this video where I could take more time. Cheers, and thanks for watching!
Maybe a-b switching would highlight the sound differences rather than gradual increases/decreases
it would help a ton if you don't have your bloody 'subscribe' plug popping up in the way of what you are trying to detail.
Confession: I was in a rush and randomly pasted the button in. Pardon the annoyance, I'll be more aware next time! Thanks for watching!