Concrete Limiter vs. the Competition

If this has already been covered, I apologize. Doing a "concrete limiter" search of the forum I get one result - from 2009?!?!
 
Anyway, I have a few limiters already (the two I use most frequently are UAD's Precision Limiter and Voxengo's Elephant). Given this, I'm thinking I probably won't purchase it. That said, if it really offers something different with as-good-or-better results, I'd rather bite the bullet now than kick myself later when the introductory price has expired.
 
Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Eric Beam


I did a rather indepth comparison last night. It's a fine brickwall on par with the others. You will get great results with mastering tasks. The softclip capability is nice. With softclip activated it's in-line with FX-G & MeldaProduction. With it off You are in ozone/L3 territory. It prevents intersample clips with the best of them. We are at a point where all major digital brickwalls give more then enough needed compression. If you need more then 6-9 dB your mix needs work. I find the main attraction of Concrete Limiter it's low system load. Being able to use it as a channel protection limiter is why I made the purchase. I have it on all of my D/A outputs before I hit my outboard/console.

Thanks for your in-depth analysis Eric, always appreciated!!

Concrete Limiter receives a thumbs up; used it today on some tracks I was finishing and there is nothing i can say negative worked like butter....

benjaminfrog

inaheartbeat


It's only $10 if you have the other modules. I can't speak for the limiters you already have. I have a bunch including Fabfilter Pro-L. It won't replace that but having it as a PC module to me is a real convenience so it was worth the $10 I spent and it does a very nice job.

Ken

Thanks for your response, Ken. I have Expanded, but I didn't purchase any of the add-ons. The $10 deal for folks in my boat is the expander/gate, which I'm not particularly interested in, so I'd be paying the $49 intro price for the limiter. 

Let me expand on my answer a bit. I think the concrete limiter is excellent on the pro channel and is very simple to use. The automatic threshold settings seem to work well. I am still unsure about the bass boost switch cause I just have not used it on enough material to say where it does and does not work well. When I tried it it did not work for me well. That is material specific though. If you have channels where ALL you have are PC modules then putting this as the last element in your signal chain is really convenient. There are plenty of times that just using the PC stuff is just fine cause I have all the plugs and they are very high quality (including the Softube stuff which is fantastic). 


Now the downside. Because the Pro Channel is either post or pre FX bin you have to set the Pro Channel to be post FX bin in order for the limiter to truly work. I really prefer my PC stuff to be pre FX bin so this is a problem if I have any other effects on a channel/bus. I have plenty of tracks where this is fine and the convenience of the PC paradigm coupled with the price is nice for me. For channels where I want fx it is not going to work the way I want it to.


Now comparing it directly to Fabfilter Pro-L is almost not fair but since it is my goto limiter I am going to :-) The Fabfilter plugin costs a bunch more so that is a downside. For that though you get a fantastic user interface that includes great graphical display to let you know what is going on. Also, you have a choice of limiting modes so you don't HAVE to use soft clipping if you don't want to. You can do clipless limiting if that is what you want.


I have the Nomad and Melba stuff also but frankly do not use them. It has nothing to do with the quality but more that it came with stuff as a package and it is not something I need to use. 


On a separate note I also have Ozone 5. I view that as a separate beast cause I don't have the uber version which allows you to separate out the pieces so it is not fair to compare that limiter function cause you really can't just throw it on any track you want.


Ken

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Much appreciated.

benjaminfrog

mmarton

Eric Beam


I did a rather indepth comparison last night. It's a fine brickwall on par with the others. You will get great results with mastering tasks. The softclip capability is nice. With softclip activated it's in-line with FX-G & MeldaProduction. With it off You are in ozone/L3 territory. It prevents intersample clips with the best of them. We are at a point where all major digital brickwalls give more then enough needed compression. If you need more then 6-9 dB your mix needs work. I find the main attraction of Concrete Limiter it's low system load. Being able to use it as a channel protection limiter is why I made the purchase. I have it on all of my D/A outputs before I hit my outboard/console.

Thanks for your in-depth analysis Eric, always appreciated!!

Likewise, thanks, Eric.
 
I'm still leaning against it as, from your description, it sounds like it's in the ballpark of other limiters, but doesn't offer anything particularly different or better. CPU usage isn't really an issue for me, at least with the UAD limiter, as the processing is done on the DSP card.
 
Nonetheless, again, thanks for the detailed feedback.

As much as I like the Precision Limiter (very much in fact) and the UAD stuff in general, there's a few things to consider:

1) Unless you have a very powerful UAD2 card, DSP power is at a finite premium 
2) The plugs are still 32-bit (although my understanding is that will change at some point)
3) The UAD card itself introduces latency (as all DSP solutions do)

Doing a "concrete limiter" search of the forum I get one result - from 2009?!?!

Don't use the forum's Search feature. It sucks. Use Google Search instead, e.g.
    concrete limiter site:cakewalk.com
Just tried it, and it returned 746 results. Of course, as soon as I click the Post Message button it'll be 747.

I purchased Ozone 5 and I like the limiter included.  I wouldn't think of using a limiter on an individual track.  I probably won't purchase this limiter although it looks great!  If I did, it would just to add it to my collection. At $49 it's tempting but will save the $$$ for something else.

In any case another nice offering from the folks at Cakewalk!

Hi Steve,

I use one sometimes on a sub buss (usually drums). Very rarely on a track. I do a lot of full band recording. Very little tracking.

-Brian

I too will use one on the drum buss subgroup or on alternative master buss to bring up the overall level if the tracks were recorded low. Then I will reference with and without the limiter.

SteveStrummerUK

dlesaux


I wouldn't think of using a limiter on an individual track.

Nor me, I wonder if we're in a minority here who are missing something fundamental? 
  
Do any of you use a limiter on a track?
 
Or even on a 'sub' bus for that matter?
 
I'm genuinely interested.

I don't use one on every track, but if I get a vocal or bass sitting nicely in the mix except for the occasional note that leaps out, I'll slap a limiter on it as opposed to pushing the compressor harder.

In that context I'd say yes too, but perhaps an appropriately fast comp/limiter rather than a brickwall'?

 
Thanks for the tip, mixsit. I'll try that out next time around.
 
 

mixsit

benjaminfrog

In that context I'd say yes too, but perhaps an appropriately fast comp/limiter rather than a brickwall'?

 
Thanks for the tip, mixsit. I'll try that out next time around.
 
 

Thank you! I didn't want to complicate but just to say if there are manageable numbers of problem ponts consider clip (or fader) automation. Presuming you don't need the sound of a particular limiter, there is total flexibility.

Yeah, I do a lot of clip gain automation, too. It depends on the situation.

Dave King

How are you guys getting it for $10?  I see it priced at $79.99.

Thanks.

Hi Dave,

This is an old thread. I think there was a promo for it for $10 but I'm not sure. The OP is from 2012.

If you're looking for a good limiter, you may want to try out Melda. They have a free suite of plug-in's and it comes with a very good limiter.

I've heard a lot of good things about the Concrete Limiter though, not trying to lead you away from it, but $79.99 is a bit steep, especially for something that locks you in to Sonar and can't be used in another DAW.

Bub.