Some of the advanced settings for mastering limiters?

Many mastering grade brickwall limiters have many more options for settings in addition to input level and ceiling level. These may include attack time, release time, lookahead time, softclip/saturation, stereo link, and more. I'd like to have a discussion about how to best take advantage of these options in order to get the most punchy and transparent mastering limiting, and what some of the more experienced limiter users have to say about it.


Attack/release: I've always heard to aim for long attack and release times for the most transparent limiting. Would you agree or disagree?


Lookahead: What's a good way to determine to best lookahead time? I feel like its not something you can just listen for using your ears like you can with attack/release.


Softclip/saturate: Any tips on how to utilize saturation that's built into a limiter? I would imagine go for just a small amount, but what do you think?


Stereo link: In general, is it better to limit left and right simultaneously, or independently? What's a good stereo link percentage to shoot for, and in what cases would you want it to be different?


Dithering: If a limiter has dithering built in, is it better to use it rather that SONAR's own dithering?


Note: If it matters at all, I mostly do upbeat dance/pop/hip-hop music.

Bristol_Jonesey

I agree - though the longer your attack time, the less limiting is applied - it's a bit of a trade off

But that's the thing - how can there be "less limiting applied"? If you set your ceiling to 0db, the limiter will limit the output to 0db no matter how long you set your attack time to, isn't that the whole idea of achieving transparent limiting? Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with you that intuitively and logically, it feels like a limiter with a long attack time is sort of pointless... And it would make sense even more for a compressor, as it wouldn't be "compressing" much. But a limiter... Well limits the sound to a certain level no matter what, right? This is why, though I understand attack/release on a compressor, I don't understand how it works for a limiter. And this is where the idea that a limiter is just a compressor with ratio=infinity gets confusing. Because no compressor has a ceiling level option.


Anyone who has input, feel free to chime in.

"Attack" and "Release" can mean different things to different limiters. In Pro-L, the limiter separates transients from the incoming signal and handles them differently than the main body of data. The attack and release controls determine when the secondary algorithm kicks in.

"Release" is also a variable parameter in so-called "intelligent" limiters such as Ozone's. These types of limiters attempt to automatically adjust release times based on the nature of the incoming signal, giving a quicker release for transients and a slower release for slower-changing levels. This helps to preserve transient perception despite your best attempts to smash the life out of them.

Clipping and saturation are codewords for harmonic distortion. If the limiter makes abrupt changes to levels, letting the signal get right up to the limit before taking any action, you get flat-topping and the harmonic distortion that comes with it. If your goal is transparency, you want settings that allow the limiter to minimize distortion (and potentially aliasing). But sometimes we use limiters for "color", meaning distortion, in which case a clipper is just the ticket. If a limiter doesn't have a clipper, you can emulate it by using very extreme settings (e.g. Ozone's "fast and loud" setting) and setting lookahead to zero.

Stereo linking means that you always lower both channels equally, even if the event that crossed the limiter's threshold was only on one side. Without this, the stereo image can bounce around in an unnatural way as one side gets reduced but not the other, causing center-panned instruments to appear to move out of the center.

Unlinking the two channels makes most sense on individual tracks and sub-busses, where shifts in the stereo image may  be acceptable or even desirable. Unlinking can result in a wider image. More sophisticated limiters let you adjust the amount of linking rather than just turning it on or off. Pro-L goes the furthest with this concept, letting you adjust the amount of linking separately for transients and non-transient material.

As for preferring a limiter's built-in dither over SONAR's dither options, that's just a personal preference. As I've said often, your choice of dither algorithms is almost irrelevant, certainly one of the least-important decisions you'll make. See for yourself: try every dither option you've got and see if you can tell any difference. I don't think you will.

Please forgive me for resurrecting an old thread, but this is driving me insane and I figured it'd be better than creating a new thread.

I've spent about 4-5 hours just now trying to use a mastering limiter to maximize my mix to mainstream commercial loudness (the level you'd hear from songs by Usher, Ne-Yo, Rihanna, Chris Brown, FloRida, etc). I exported my unmastered mix, which has about 3dB of headroom throughout, and used ToneBoosters Barricade. After several hours, I've given up (at least for today) and cannot, for the life of me, reach that level of loudness without distorting my mix like crazy.

I've tried things like cutting much of the bass frequencies so that the limiter can limit more extensively, and use a master buss compressor to try and even out the levels prior to limiting. Nothing worked.

I understand that the mastering engineers for these artists are professionals, and there's no way I'm gonna match their quality with my equipment, but I was hoping to at least get to ballpark level with the TB Barricade... wasn't even close. With the ceiling set at -0.1dB, I could push the limiter up by maybe 6dB at the most without distorting. But in order to reach the commercial loudness I seek, I found I would need to raise it by like 11dB-13dB... ridiculous.

How do they do it? Is there some secret tool I'm overlooking? Can some of the more knowleadgable fellows here give me some tips? Would appreciate it big time...

I like TRacks3 Brickwall Limiter

IK usually do deals at least twice a year on their plugs.