Cakewalk Concrete Limiter--anyone using it? Tips?

Hey, folks.  I've been messing around with the Concrete Limiter in the ProChannel recently (for the first time, though I've had it for years).
 
I wonder if anyone finds it useful/effective?  I've been crunching my mixes with it lately.  Seems to work nicely, but I have to keep it a bit subtle.  Since I am working with dense rock mixes with distorted guitars, I find too low a threshold brings out too much of the guitar distortion.
 
Is it advisable to use this limiter at all prior to mastering? 

noynekker
 
Sounds like you've also found if it is pushed too hard, results are not so pleasing (at least when applied on an entire mix)

Yes, exactly.  But when I'm giving "clients" a quick end-of-session mix, it levels things up a bit on the Master Bus.

Haha.  Yeah, I can hear you on that.  I've been skeptical about using it on a final product.

I think it is perfectly fine on the master bus. It is a limiter. Yes it has only controls it needs to do the job. Internally it is very sophisticated. It does have a look ahead buffer.  Also its pretty neutral. The only reason I can think of for some of the comments is its being pushed way to far.  I use it to prevent clipping on the odd clip. If it is being used to maximize output it may not be the best choice.  

There is better out there, but the Concrete limiter is a pretty nice little plug in.
I particularly liked that it was a PC module.

When in Sonar I always use it on all my tracks, the last insert on the ProChannel, but not necessarily for limiting. I work in track view all the time and the concrete limiter is great for using as a gain control for mixing and of course you have the limiting function in the event it does go over. 

cliffr
I find all this talk of using the concrete limiter as a "Gain Control" quite puzzling.
 
It's not a gain control, it doesn't have any "Input Gain" control, it's a "Threshold Control" and as you change the "Threshold", it's adjusting the amount of compression. Nothing to do with gain, it's compression you're getting.

 
You only get limiting/compression if you get gain reduction....
 
Concrete Limiter As A Volume Control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9IBJkQJoj8
 

I have the (new) Waves L1 and to my ears the Concrete Limiter sounds better, esp in the low end. It's a 64-band compressor if I recall correctly. I use it all the time, though not as a final mastering tool - I have Ozone 8 for that..

Steev

cliffr

Rasure

cliffr
I find all this talk of using the concrete limiter as a "Gain Control" quite puzzling.
 
It's not a gain control, it doesn't have any "Input Gain" control, it's a "Threshold Control" and as you change the "Threshold", it's adjusting the amount of compression. Nothing to do with gain, it's compression you're getting.

 
You only get limiting/compression if you get gain reduction....
 
Concrete Limiter As A Volume Control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9IBJkQJoj8
 

Interesting, but even in that sense it's only useful as a "pseudo gain control" for relatively low level signals. In reality it is not a gain control at all, I see how you might use it as a "pseudo gain control" for relatively low level signals that have a limited dynamic range.  If your aim is to control the gain, then you can't beat a "Real Gain Control".  You won't get any surprises with a real gain control :-)
 
The concrete limiter is definitely not a gain control.

AHmmmmmmmmmm, I was talking about using Concreate Limiter as a gain ""STAGE!""
Kind of look at this as one of those cool "Tips & Tricks" methods instead of another endless debate on who's right and who's wrong, then maybe you'll try it, and experience for your self how freak'in COOL it really works!
 
 
You may not be able to see the difference in volume, but you can certainly hear it with you ears as you slide the threshold fader down, it continues to raise the volume UP. And believe it or not, the gain will continue to steadily increase until something triggers the specified threshold, and the point of maximum gain staging.
 Oh yeah, anything Pseudo about Concrete Limiter would be classifying it as a Compressor.
That's clearly a novice mistake, as naïve as calling "Normalization" compression.
 
And there is no reason I've ever found  to increase volume/gain on a signal unless it was weak in the first place. Using a trim pad, or "gain" control as it's labeled in SONAR is actually designed to set level just "below 0 db at your signal peak!" What makes it vitally important to do so, especially with digital recording, being all audio is basically recorded with 1's and 0's it has no noise ceiling, so there's really nothing to stop your volume levels to go off the charts and exceed the dangerous levels.
 And not only that, the more you exceed a mic's maximum trim level (set to below 0 db) the more sensitive the mic gets, the more distorted the channel gets, and also that slight hush of your computer fans starts to turn into a raging wind storm.
 
And there are times for example when using a "trim" pot to increase gain on an acoustic guitarist playing a very soft passage accidently raps a knuckle on the guitar's sound board which can send your average SPL from -20 db up to +20 db, it is no surprise to me when it blows a driver out of a pair of prosumer headphones at best, or at worse whacks you directly in the ears at around 125db-130db with prograde headphones such as Sennheiser HD 280 Pro closed back noise canceling cans and a Rane HC6 pro headphone console cranked up loud can be painful and certainly make you legally deaf for the rest of the day. Too many overdoses of that does permanent ear damage.

Well, I didn't classify it as a compressor, nor am I a novice or naive. It's a limiter, and the threshold slider controls the level at which compression begins to kick in.
 
I said I found calling it a gain control puzzling. Because ... well it's not a gain control.
I understand how you're talking about using it, which may be cool, but doesn't make it a gain or volume control.  Yes you may use it to apply some gain, but there are other effects there, namely limiting and compression, which you are obviously aware of and taking advantage of in the scenarios you describe.
 
However, to call it a gain or volume control, or use instead of a gain or volume control, it isn't, it's a limiter and functions quite differently. Therefore, to use it as, and call it a volume control or gain control, it's quite correct to call it a "pseudo gain control". I really don't understand why that seems to get such a reaction.

LJB
I have the (new) Waves L1 and to my ears the Concrete Limiter sounds better, esp in the low end. It's a 64-band compressor if I recall correctly. I use it all the time, though not as a final mastering tool - I have Ozone 8 for that..

I had the old version of Waves L1 as well as L3 which has EQ built into the GUI solving that problem 
 One of my absolute favorite go to Waves mastering plugins is the Waves F6 Adaptive EQ.
 What's so great about the F6 is it only effects the areas at the points where the frequency anomalies occur and leaves the over all broadband EQ curve alone which gives you an over all more constant and predictable sound than a  traditional fixed point EQ even could.
 And yes it can be used on tracks, great for things like killing the boxiness out of close mic acoustic guitars, eliminating PLOSIVES and sibilance from singers who like to grab hold of and eat large condenser mic's, but running too many instances of the F6 will have a serious effect on computer recourses and recording latency, so don't forget to FREEZE all tracks which you use the F6 on.
 It's very much like having Cakewalk Adaptive Limiter built into the MB64 Multiband Compressor in one plugin, plus with a whole lot more functionality and control for zeroing in on just one problem frequency, or separately set and adjust ALL problem frequency band ranges completely independent of each other, each band switchable and assignable to mono, duel mono, stereo, center, and sides.
 It's like a parallel processing matrix with an overhear cam and glass packs, LoL 
 
But the L1 and L3 to me are really good for focusing on Electronica and Club dance music where there is NEVER any shortage of chest thump'in bass and kick drums going on, they were Waves answer to psycho acoustic processors such as the Aphex Aural Exciter and the BBE SonicMaximizer.
 Used judiciously and sparingly, these were really good at beefing up analog tape recordings, especially for restoring 10 to 20 year old tapes that lost all their high end frequencies over the years to prepare and repair them for mastering for digitizing to high quality .mp3 and CD formats. Waves L1 for harmonic tuning and L3 for tone shaping were my weapons of choice back in the day as great software equivalents to the Aphex Aural Exciter hardware which I still own and use occasionally for live sound reinforcement to give the illusion of having a bass sub when there actually isn't one.
 They really work their magic with time delay in the upper mid to high frequency ranges actually fooling your ears and brain into thinking your speakers or the source of the sound is actually clearer and or more airy then it actually is.
 I remember reading a "white paper" on psycho acoustic technology back in my studies for Audio MIDI engineering (Berklee School of Music Home Study courses circa 2002-'03). Typically overloaded with boring, tedious, and seemingly useless physics and stuff us creative musical types couldn't give a dead rat's sphincter bone about (until you finally get a grasp on it), I found Aphex's white paper on PAP unusually festinating and thought... OMG.... aM I tUrNing iNtO a NeRd? 
 And what was really amazing was, to field test my understanding of PAP, I plugged/wired my rack mount Aphex Aural Exciter type C2 into an old cheap Sony car stereo with a Radio Shack cassette player adaptor and hooked the Sony car stereo up to an old 6"x9" car speaker which I simply just placed on the carpeted floor and wasn't mounted in a speaker cabinet. Placing a bare speaker on a thick rug shouldn't produce any real low frequencies which actually radiate from the speaker cabinet itself.
 I wouldn't say it sounded like a Marshall or Fender amp, but quite shockingly it DID sound better than most cheapo bargain basement amps do, ya know, the kind of no name amps music stores like to sucker beginners into buying for $50 that come in any color you want, except for the color you want??
 
 Second gen Aphex's type C (with BIG Bottom) and BBE added bass contour control, a.k.a. sub harmonic synthesizers to fool your ears and brain into thinking the bass is actually there.
 Cakewalk has a plugin for adding sub bass harmonics synthisis that can be used to compensate for the L1's lack of bass control, but I can't remember what it's called at present. The plugin looks like a 19" rack mount unit, and like a lot of Waves plugins it has a switch to cut back on CPU usage so it can be used on tracks without taking much of a hit on computer resources.
 
And so, I'd also like to point out at this point is, assumptions are not only bad, they tend to be ridiculous and absurd coming from the completely negative mindset of those who assume everyone is out to get them, and assume anyone who says something they don't agree with or "believe" is lying to them.
 All I can say about that is PPPPPBBBBBBTTTTHHHZZZzz.. Sounds pretty shallow and narrow minded to me..
What makes anyone think they are so important or special to make such grandiose assumptions like that?
 
 
 And from my experiences, I found 90-95% of SONAR'S stability problems come from user error and poor work flow habits, and from novice user's who feel, just because SONAR can record unlimited tracks supporting 100's of plugins, doesn't mean your computer can!
 And just because you have an early gen Intel i7 machine you purchased on sale at Best Buy, doesn't mean you have a computer workstation capable of running a modern day DAW full steam ahead.
 And while it's very possible to run buss and mastering plugins on tracks, and vise versa, and get good results by breaking the rules and such, as long as you know how far you can push and go before crashing, burning, and crossing over the red line of destruction.
 It's a really good idea to learn what these plugins do and what are really all about and what the recommended uses  and applications are.
 And it's a GREAT idea to learn what the rules are before breaking them.
 
 
 

Gmichaelhall

Saxon1066
Haha.  Yeah, I can hear you on that.  I've been skeptical about using it on a final product.

+1. All one has to do is compare it to a decent limiter and the decision to use or not is easy to make!

What is it you find bad about it?

Adaptive Limiter is superior to Concrete Limiter as a mastering limiter. It’s a good limiter however and really simple to use.

As far as the master buss is concerned I prefer a clipper, I certainly wouldn't use the concrete limiter on a master, good enough for channels though. In Studio One I use the Waves L1 for individual tracks.