If mixing into a limiter is wrong, I don't want to be right. First thing I do when I start the mix after editing, basic panning and static levels is turn on my 2-bus and limiter.
Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles is famous for its drum sound that uses agressively the limiter, with a sidechain triggered by the bass drum. the recording workflow was different back then (1966) though, they did It Right At The Source ;-)
Some excellent points there Joe. I too thought for years that limiting was only for the mastering stage, but I have more recently seen advice suggesting that you can also mix into a Limiter to achieve a different type of mix character. There is a caveat though, that making volume changes to louder parts in the mix may not appear to do much if those parts are already hitting the Limiter, so you have to be very aware of what the Limiter is doing while you mix. I generally export a mix without a Limiter, then as I have Ozone 9, I bring in the exported mix and run it through Ozone using their presets so I can get a good test mix with decent loudness and limiting. When I decide that the mix is finished, then I'll do a more hands on approach to it in Ozone and use a mixture of master assistant and also my owm tweaks. Depending on the particular song,, sound, genre and mixing engineer, mixing into a Limiter is not always the no go that it used to be, though personally I don't think I'm experienced enough yet to start mixing into a limiter. Anyway, thanks again for the great video - I always learn something useful from watching them 👍
I only use limiters when mixing on individual elements poking through. Never on the mixbus. It seems pointless, and I've learned how to get a good crest factor while mixing, so I can know reliably that my mix will handle soft clipping and limiting during mastering well. :D
I got a counter thought for you. I recently experiment it and then search for different mastering engineer opinion. As always, it depends on so many factors but a lot of them including Gavin Lurssen & Reuben Cohen, Jonathan Wyner and Pete Lyman said if you mix into a limiter, please do not remove it before sending to mastering. And it is pretty logic what they said. If you remove it, your mix will be different because as you said, limiter affects more than just dynamic. It affects tones and balance. So if you mix with a limiter and it is good. Then send your mix to master like that and that's it. Personally, I mix with a limiter more as a safety setting and just control my gains staging to be good at any moment. So my limiter is not that useful or even not even triggering anything at all.
I just want to say as a person who had quite a bit of early analogue experience, what most people do not know about is the limiting or compressing affect that analoge tape had all and of its own....... So, should you use limiters? Depends on HOW you use it..... Audio Analoge tapes had it just by the nature of their design...... Not only that..... The natural noise floor that tapes had was what made sure that we mixed pretty hot to it.
Great tutorial by Master Joe Gilder. I like the visualization within plugins, to confirm what I hear, and to help associate the “if I’m hearing this X, that Y is what I’m going to see. For me,in mixing and mastering, the ears run the show. I completely agree with teaching means concepts such as how and why.
I have been doing what you have been doing for pretty much exactly for those reasons. I use sonible's pure:limit in the post-fader position in the Stereo Out (master fader) because it is a very simple tool. But when I am finally done and do my mastering or master preparation, the limiter is turned off.
A nice intro to Pro-L2 for those of us yet to enter Fabfilter-world 🙂 I "was taught" for professional submissions, I should submit three versions of my mix to a mastering engineer: my original (which would ordinarily have a limiter on the mix bus), a version with the limiter off, and a version with mix bus processing (mostly) off. For mix contest purposes, I'd just use the "limited" version.
And BTW, thank you again Joe for all your work and information. Other mastering compressors/limiters that have a visualizer of some kind include AMEK's Mastering Compressor (PA), Boz' the Wall, SSL X-Comp, Softube's Weiss Compressor/Limiter, Newfangled's Elevate, and sonible's smart:limit (the latter my current favorite)
The 2 recent limiters I’m using have visual representation as well. My go-to Melda UltraMaximizer has bar meters, and in a slide out area, the waveform (although smaller image). My free D16 Frontier has the old school Vu meter only. My LVC Clipped-Max has what I’m referring to as a waveform meter. Yes, it’s a clipper, however their Limited-Max has it too. They also have a beta waveform meter similar to their others. Then there’s a free limiter called Wave Breaker by Press Play, it has input and output waveform metering. Sounds decent too.
Every DAW has got a brickwall limiter or clipper build in. Just pull the master fader up and let it clip. You will hear distortion. Its like ESP in the car. You cannot switch it off. Its for safety function. You can in some cases clip the master. And get louder. Going over zero. But you got to lern to hear distortion and consider if that's what you want to sound rhe mix.
i select my kicks while running through a limiter wirh 5-6 db reduction. If than they punch through like in references. while listening on big, medium, small and very smal speakers.. i will take them. If not i may try to eq or distort them... this while using metric AB to reference loudness.. but... i also will choose the kick which gives me the best feel if the result after limiter is aceptable. No way i could find better than this for referencing as the references always have been mastered, limited. There are many ways to do this... and there always be someone doing the opposite with best results. Its your experience. But you know that you are going to use Tape, glue comp and limiter anyway on your master.. dont you? so why being afraid to "face the sound" you'll get as soon as possible.. once you practice this a few times. i think there is no way back😊😊
Limiting in mixing, heck yeah. 1. Frequency split 80hz-120hz on drum bus with Presonus limiter on low side . “A”setting slow attack, 20ms release . Sometimes “B”. 1/2-2db gain reduction. The Presonus limiter set this way gives me the hard punch vs the pillow punch other limiters do. 2. Lead vocal 1/2-2 db gain reduction, med attack 30ms release. 3. Clean guitars 4. Acoustic Guitars 5. Kick 6.Snare 7. Vocal bus parallel limiting, hit it hard mix in low, shhhh don’t tell anyone. Yes I am a fanboy of the Presonus limiter , and my methods on compression and limiting are to have multiple layers. Stacking two LA-2A’s or 1176’s sometimes with no gain reduction gives you harmonics on harmonics and don’t tell anyone about that either. Full disclosure, I didn’t invent multi stage compression or limiting, but it took me a while to put all the pieces together.
Joe you are a gentleman and a scholar! I AM a surgeon (but I fix hernias, I wasn't smart enough for brain surgery 😆) and I constantly harp at my residents that memorization is not MASTERY! What will you do when something happens that wasn't "part of the plan"? What happens when the "recipe" doesn't account for what you are staring at right now!? Everything worth learning is like this! There's no recipe. The problem is a puzzle, and your brain is a tool box. Examine the puzzle, consult your tool box, and engage some problems solving skills! This is tough to do when you realize you don't really understand the tools in your tool box.... Warms my heart to hear someone else emphasize this point about learning and understanding. We appreciate your down to earth approach and no nonsense mentality about how fancy gear will never be a substitute for a fundamental understanding and a good set of ears. GIRATS!
Sometimes I use tape saturation and very slight tape clipping as a substitute for a limiter. It helps in achieving a type of quality I really like about early Moody Blues albums. Am I understanding correctly that the use of subtle tape clipping is just a different way to get a louder mix, or is there an important difference between the two methods that I haven't considered? I'm a bit unsure about the process.
Sure, saturation will give some compression, but it will also add harmonics. This might work really well on some songs, Radiohead's OK Computer was swimming in saturation and it sounded glorious. But it's far from a one size fits all effect. In most genres, the limiter is mostly very transparent, you'd hardly notice it was there until you took it away.
That only goes so far due to streaming services having the option for normalization. I do my own thing with LUFS because it may or may not get turned down
Great video! Where do u stand on using limiter on individual channels when u are mixing? For example I see a lot of ppl using limiting on vocals during . I'm fear limiting on single channels as i feel it might decrease the quality of the audio but i dont have a deeper underatanding why. Thx!
I always put a limiter on my exported mixes. I test that export on pretty much every speaker I have access to. I find that it reveals what frequencies need a little more taming before it's done.
Why do you remove the limiter before sending it to mastering? It would completely change the dynamics of the final mix. I also know that in the mastering stage a limiter is used,in many cases. Updated loudness levels, take care of most uneven processes. Just wondering.
same question. why do you remove limiter before mastering. for me i don’t like much distortion compared to many and i don’t want to play the loudness wars. i only want to hit limiter very softly to catch some weird peak. i want to mix as well as i can to leave some dynamics and still create some loudness. and then if i do well i will use some limiting on mastering to gain some volume. if the mix needed the limiter and i didn’t go crazy with it which i don’t believe in. then it should be fine to send to the mastering. also works well in presonus studio one just to send it to the mastering to make a copy for the car or a client, etc. and at that stage you could slap another limiter on it if you needed a little extra volume just to listen at normal levels. thanks for listening and would love to hear Joe’s comments
Am I the only person with a volume knob? Everybodys obsessed with flattening everything these days. If you gain stage properly you shouldn't need to limit. The band buys and preps the ingredients, the mixing engineer mixes everything together, the mastering engineer (not the mixing engineer) bakes the cake. It seems like people want to mix with a mastered sound. 🤔
re: volume knob - Sometimes I want to listen to mixes in the car. Without a limiter, it can be too quiet to hear over highway noise. No reason not to add a limiter on export so I can hear it at a reasonable volume.
WORST thing in modern music production! Flat out volume with NO dynamic left. No longer has an analogue dynamic! Mild compression at the end is fine, hard limiting just strangles the whole recording! No just NO!
If mixing into a limiter is wrong, I don't want to be right. First thing I do when I start the mix after editing, basic panning and static levels is turn on my 2-bus and limiter.
Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles is famous for its drum sound that uses agressively the limiter, with a sidechain triggered by the bass drum. the recording workflow was different back then (1966) though, they did It Right At The Source ;-)
This is fantastic advice and answered my own fuzzy questions about this.
Thank you very much !
Some excellent points there Joe. I too thought for years that limiting was only for the mastering stage, but I have more recently seen advice suggesting that you can also mix into a Limiter to achieve a different type of mix character. There is a caveat though, that making volume changes to louder parts in the mix may not appear to do much if those parts are already hitting the Limiter, so you have to be very aware of what the Limiter is doing while you mix.
I generally export a mix without a Limiter, then as I have Ozone 9, I bring in the exported mix and run it through Ozone using their presets so I can get a good test mix with decent loudness and limiting. When I decide that the mix is finished, then I'll do a more hands on approach to it in Ozone and use a mixture of master assistant and also my owm tweaks.
Depending on the particular song,, sound, genre and mixing engineer, mixing into a Limiter is not always the no go that it used to be, though personally I don't think I'm experienced enough yet to start mixing into a limiter.
Anyway, thanks again for the great video - I always learn something useful from watching them 👍
I only use limiters when mixing on individual elements poking through. Never on the mixbus. It seems pointless, and I've learned how to get a good crest factor while mixing, so I can know reliably that my mix will handle soft clipping and limiting during mastering well. :D
I got a counter thought for you. I recently experiment it and then search for different mastering engineer opinion. As always, it depends on so many factors but a lot of them including Gavin Lurssen & Reuben Cohen, Jonathan Wyner and Pete Lyman said if you mix into a limiter, please do not remove it before sending to mastering. And it is pretty logic what they said. If you remove it, your mix will be different because as you said, limiter affects more than just dynamic. It affects tones and balance. So if you mix with a limiter and it is good. Then send your mix to master like that and that's it. Personally, I mix with a limiter more as a safety setting and just control my gains staging to be good at any moment. So my limiter is not that useful or even not even triggering anything at all.
God bless you Joe! You are so helpful!
I just want to say as a person who had quite a bit of early analogue experience, what most people do not know about is the limiting or compressing affect that analoge tape had all and of its own....... So, should you use limiters? Depends on HOW you use it..... Audio Analoge tapes had it just by the nature of their design...... Not only that..... The natural noise floor that tapes had was what made sure that we mixed pretty hot to it.
Great tutorial by Master Joe Gilder. I like the visualization within plugins, to confirm what I hear, and to help associate the “if I’m hearing this X, that Y is what I’m going to see. For me,in mixing and mastering, the ears run the show.
I completely agree with teaching means concepts such as how and why.
It can crush the hell out of a mix destroys your transients
I have been doing what you have been doing for pretty much exactly for those reasons.
I use sonible's pure:limit in the post-fader position in the Stereo Out (master fader) because it is a very simple tool. But when I am finally done and do my mastering or master preparation, the limiter is turned off.
Yes - Gandalf ------- well done video
I apply the stock limiter on the Digital Return (Mains) because curiously many VST instruments cause clipping when loaded.😃
Very insightful, Joe!!!
For me, it's fine to use limiter (if set it correctly). You may try use different styles of limiting in Pro-L plugin.
A nice intro to Pro-L2 for those of us yet to enter Fabfilter-world 🙂 I "was taught" for professional submissions, I should submit three versions of my mix to a mastering engineer: my original (which would ordinarily have a limiter on the mix bus), a version with the limiter off, and a version with mix bus processing (mostly) off. For mix contest purposes, I'd just use the "limited" version.
And BTW, thank you again Joe for all your work and information. Other mastering compressors/limiters that have a visualizer of some kind include AMEK's Mastering Compressor (PA), Boz' the Wall, SSL X-Comp, Softube's Weiss Compressor/Limiter, Newfangled's Elevate, and sonible's smart:limit (the latter my current favorite)
The 2 recent limiters I’m using have visual representation as well. My go-to Melda UltraMaximizer has bar meters, and in a slide out area, the waveform (although smaller image). My free D16 Frontier has the old school Vu meter only. My LVC Clipped-Max has what I’m referring to as a waveform meter. Yes, it’s a clipper, however their Limited-Max has it too. They also have a beta waveform meter similar to their others. Then there’s a free limiter called Wave Breaker by Press Play, it has input and output waveform metering. Sounds decent too.
Tip: … and use a limiter on the master buss during live streams too, whether its your church or your youtube podcast👍
I love your vidéos thanks bro
Every DAW has got a brickwall limiter or clipper build in. Just pull the master fader up and let it clip. You will hear distortion. Its like ESP in the car. You cannot switch it off. Its for safety function. You can in some cases clip the master. And get louder. Going over zero. But you got to lern to hear distortion and consider if that's what you want to sound rhe mix.
i select my kicks while running through a limiter wirh 5-6 db reduction. If than they punch through like in references. while listening on big, medium, small and very smal speakers.. i will take them.
If not i may try to eq or distort them... this while using metric AB to reference loudness.. but... i also will choose the kick which gives me the best feel if the result after limiter is aceptable. No way i could find better than this for referencing as the references always have been mastered, limited.
There are many ways to do this... and there always be someone doing the opposite with best results. Its your experience.
But you know that you are going to use Tape, glue comp and limiter anyway on your master.. dont you?
so why being afraid to "face the sound" you'll get as soon as possible.. once you practice this a few times. i think there is no way back😊😊
I always put it on if you say is wrong, today i won't agree 😂 just a -0.4 is okay to me
Limiting in mixing, heck yeah.
1. Frequency split 80hz-120hz on drum bus with Presonus limiter on low side . “A”setting slow attack, 20ms release . Sometimes “B”. 1/2-2db gain reduction. The Presonus limiter set this way gives me the hard punch vs the pillow punch other limiters do.
2. Lead vocal 1/2-2 db gain reduction, med attack 30ms release.
3. Clean guitars
4. Acoustic Guitars
5. Kick
6.Snare
7. Vocal bus parallel limiting, hit it hard mix in low, shhhh don’t tell anyone.
Yes I am a fanboy of the Presonus limiter , and my methods on compression and limiting are to have multiple layers.
Stacking two LA-2A’s or 1176’s sometimes with no gain reduction gives you harmonics on harmonics and don’t tell anyone about that either.
Full disclosure, I didn’t invent multi stage compression or limiting, but it took me a while to put all the pieces together.
If YOU make experimental electronic Music with feedback loops limiter shuld always be used
I use limiters on all 6 of my group busses. Also on many individual tracks when I feel the need... 🤷
proL2 and Newfangled Elevate are crazy good.
Joe you are a gentleman and a scholar! I AM a surgeon (but I fix hernias, I wasn't smart enough for brain surgery 😆) and I constantly harp at my residents that memorization is not MASTERY! What will you do when something happens that wasn't "part of the plan"? What happens when the "recipe" doesn't account for what you are staring at right now!? Everything worth learning is like this! There's no recipe. The problem is a puzzle, and your brain is a tool box. Examine the puzzle, consult your tool box, and engage some problems solving skills! This is tough to do when you realize you don't really understand the tools in your tool box.... Warms my heart to hear someone else emphasize this point about learning and understanding. We appreciate your down to earth approach and no nonsense mentality about how fancy gear will never be a substitute for a fundamental understanding and a good set of ears. GIRATS!
Sometimes I use tape saturation and very slight tape clipping as a substitute for a limiter. It helps in achieving a type of quality I really like about early Moody Blues albums. Am I understanding correctly that the use of subtle tape clipping is just a different way to get a louder mix, or is there an important difference between the two methods that I haven't considered? I'm a bit unsure about the process.
Sure, saturation will give some compression, but it will also add harmonics. This might work really well on some songs, Radiohead's OK Computer was swimming in saturation and it sounded glorious.
But it's far from a one size fits all effect. In most genres, the limiter is mostly very transparent, you'd hardly notice it was there until you took it away.
@@Mikey__R That's a good way of putting it. Thanks!
Yes
Joe why don't you use a plugin like Loudness Penalty "to get on base" volume-wise"? and do you ever use referencetracks in your mastering process?
That only goes so far due to streaming services having the option for normalization. I do my own thing with LUFS because it may or may not get turned down
Yes but if you can’t balance a mix and something is distorting, then what?
I don’t understand the question. Is it distorting because the mix is clipping? If so, turn the mix down and turn the speakers up.
Great video! Where do u stand on using limiter on individual channels when u are mixing? For example I see a lot of ppl using limiting on vocals during . I'm fear limiting on single channels as i feel it might decrease the quality of the audio but i dont have a deeper underatanding why. Thx!
I always put a limiter on my exported mixes. I test that export on pretty much every speaker I have access to. I find that it reveals what frequencies need a little more taming before it's done.
Why do you remove the limiter before sending it to mastering? It would completely change the dynamics of the final mix. I also know that in the mastering stage a limiter is used,in many cases. Updated loudness levels, take care of most uneven processes. Just wondering.
same question. why do you remove limiter before mastering. for me i don’t like much distortion compared to many and i don’t want to play the loudness wars. i only want to hit limiter very softly to catch some weird peak. i want to mix as well as i can to leave some dynamics and still create some loudness. and then if i do well i will use some limiting on mastering to gain some volume. if the mix needed the limiter and i didn’t go crazy with it which i don’t believe in. then it should be fine to send to the mastering. also works well in presonus studio one just to send it to the mastering to make a copy for the car or a client, etc. and at that stage you could slap another limiter on it if you needed a little extra volume just to listen at normal levels. thanks for listening and would love to hear Joe’s comments
did you buy a new phone or camera for filming recently?? quality is way more crisp
Am I the only person with a volume knob? Everybodys obsessed with flattening everything these days. If you gain stage properly you shouldn't need to limit. The band buys and preps the ingredients, the mixing engineer mixes everything together, the mastering engineer (not the mixing engineer) bakes the cake. It seems like people want to mix with a mastered sound. 🤔
re: volume knob - Sometimes I want to listen to mixes in the car. Without a limiter, it can be too quiet to hear over highway noise. No reason not to add a limiter on export so I can hear it at a reasonable volume.
With the Fabfilter dynamics processors, is there a way to switch it to smooth scrolling mode?
Do you use a set volume on your mix buss? I'm having issues getting adequate mix volume without a limiter.
Mixing into a limiter is fine
I like signum nugen audio
Your vest video
WORST thing in modern music production! Flat out volume with NO dynamic left. No longer has an analogue dynamic!
Mild compression at the end is fine, hard limiting just strangles the whole recording!
No just NO!
You have nice teeth!