Adaptive Limiter - What's everybody think of it?

Rod, could you elaborate on what you mean by "sounding good"?
 
I know certain Limiters will impart a certain sonic signature, but by and large, you should not really be able to hear a lot of difference between them as their job is to simply limit the signal with as much transparency as possible.
 
Maybe, the Concrete Limiter isn't as transparent as the Adaptive Limiter and this is what you're hearing.

Not sold on it yet.
1st time I tried to use it I found it rumbly and distorted.  I tried several presets.
Used it last night and it was transparent, but I barely added any additional gain.
I'm hoping more chime in with their experience.

Hi. I like this a lot. Nice GUI, an easy to use. Transparent when needed, and pumping and aggressive when called for.
I use it on instruments / parallel processing, as well as on bus duty. Like everything, it's how you use it 
All the best.

If you record a drum track that tests the limits of the 0bd ceiling while the rest of the mix barely makes 6db then you might need some control compression or limiting on that track. If the kit is split into multiple tracks, then you have more control. Could be an extra loud snare drum. Putting a limiter on that track can help bring the mix into better focus. I just used drums as an example, It could be anything really. I wouldn't use a limiter as a first response. I might try EQ and volume first. If I couldn't tame it I might try a limiter set very low.
 
If tracks or buses are individually limited through buses you can use different types of limiters for different material in the same song. When it comes to mastering stage you shouldn't need very much limiting at that point. 
 
This is only one example. I most commonly use track limiting on guitars recorded with a lot of snap, drums that overwhelm the mix or bass. It's usually a last resort for me. I'm more likely to use a dynamic compressor or side chain into a compressor.
 
I don't want to kill my parts. I only want to tame the more aggressive places. Over using EQ can kill the interesting frequencies in a track.

Loving the Adaptive Limiter here.  I will still use th concrete limiter in certain circumstnces - it does do a great job of "bringing up the room" on drum parts, and the bass switch is very useful.
 
In response to some of the comments above, it is important to check your levels going into a limiter.
 
If your mix is already at -0.1db, you will get a very different response from a limiter than if your mix is at, eg. (random figure) -6.0db.
 
Make sure you leave enough headroom to play with.

I think transparent limiter are supposed to inflate the sound like a compressor If you want harmonics then use a maximiser with limiting in the same process like Sonnox limiter.

I did a sort of test by substituting the Adaptive Limiter into a project on my desktop computer where I used the PC Concrete Limiter, and quite liked the result. I really like the GUI, and it sounds great, I played with the presets and see them as being very useful. However . . . when I moved the project to my Laptop to add some mobile recording to the project, the Adaptive Limiter was all distorted, pinned in the red, sounding awful ! If I bypass Adaptive Limiter, all is well again . . . went back to Concrete Limiter.
 
Now I'm thinking it uses up a lot more CPU resource that my Laptop just doesn't have, though every other project I have moved to my Laptop has not had any issues like this. (similar cpu, same amount of ram, similar USB audio interface settings)
 
Actually, when I examine the Adaptive Limiter settings I used . . . I used "Drum Bus Aggressive" preset, with lookahead set to "medium" . . . so clearly that will use more resources than the Concrete Limiter would.
 
So , like others have stated, I may have to use the resource hungry settings only in a Mastering setting, not as a plugin in a project ?  . . . though, it's hard to predict what settings will push my Laptop over the ledge.

ptheisen
noynekker,
 
It's possible that what you are experiencing with your laptop was the known issue with the adaptive limiter and the 64-bit double precision engine. Review your Preferences/audio/driver settings. If the DPE is checked, uncheck it and see if that removes the symptoms. There was a thread two weeks ago regarding this, with the subject "Adaptive limiter sounds like ring modulator".

I discovered that my DPE was checked, so I unchecked it, put the AL back into my project, and now it is working fine!  Good tip!!  I await the day that AL works with the DPE engaged.

Tried the AL on a vocal track and, it worked very well there. 

interpolated - I agree. A nice meter with vu, LUFS, peak, K, crest, etc. all in one would be awesome.

The more I use this new Adaptive Limiter, the more I'm inclined to not trust it as a VST channel plugin.
This afternoon I ran into problems using it as a drum track limiter. I have a few limiters that I mainly use . . . Sonar Concrete Prochannel limiter or Ozone 7 Maximizer limiter. When substituting Sonar's new Adaptive Limiter there are issues with exporting a mix (I'm not using fast bounce) . . . such that when using it with BFD3 VST3 drums, I get snares, toms and crashes randomly disappearing from the exported audio mix. (I've even tried freezing the drum tracks before export, and it still occurs . . . and it seems the Adaptive Limiter sometimes doesn't even engage when freezing the drum tracks . . . kind of weird)
 
Too bad, because I've noticed the Adaptive Limiter sounds better, smoother, but I can't live with the unpredictable mix export for my BFD3 drums. When I switch back to either the Concrete Limiter or Ozone Maximizer the random dropouts don't happen, just doesn't sound as great. Anyone else using BFD3 notice this ?

I'm a bit spoiled with things like Ozone, but the plug seems nice enough. I still think Concrete Limiter is the beez kneez though.

I used it for the first time, adaptive.  On drum buss, worked nicely.  Pressed it pretty hard - enough that I was getting more room sound out of the room mics.   Unless I'm going for a room sound,  I get to that point and stop then back it off a tad.   Its subjective, but I liked it.      
 
Tried it side by side with waves 316 on a master project.  Country.  Many tracks, very dynamic, many different instruments.  Not bad at all.  I liked hearing the affect of MP3 a bunch.  Nice idea.  However, the 316 won out.   I will be using AL on mixes, but not on mastering yet.  I will give it a try on a source with less detail and see where that takes me.   
 
My hat is humbly tipped to the bakers.  Sound tool - thank you. 
 
Lance 

bitflipper
and 10 being "my perfect waveform is a brick".

OMG ... that's funny~!

I just upgraded from X3 to Platinum and I'm not seeing Adaptive Limiter when I click on "add module" in the Pro Channel.
I'm also not seeing some of my 3rd party modules...how can I add them to this drop down and remove the ones I never use?
 
Thanks,
R