• SONAR
  • Cakewalk Concrete Limiter--anyone using it? Tips?
2018/03/23 00:30:15
Saxon1066
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? 
2018/03/23 01:50:33
noynekker
Concrete Limiter is a pretty decent limiter considering it has so few buttons.
Personally, I wouldn't use it as a mastering limiter, I find it's not that sophisticated.
For me, it's more of a basic channel limiter, and many of my mixes from the past few years have it on the drum bus, but used fairly lightly / moderately. It is certainly easy to dial into a channel quickly, at least that's how I've used it.
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)
2018/03/23 04:27:23
Saxon1066
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.
2018/03/23 05:57:25
Gmichaelhall
Personally, I find it to be one of the worst brickwall limiters to put anywhere your master bus. I'm not sure who built this for Sonar but it is among the last limiters I would use for any purpose actually. It's not a nice sounding plugin at any setting, imo.
2018/03/23 08:11:40
Saxon1066
Haha.  Yeah, I can hear you on that.  I've been skeptical about using it on a final product.
2018/03/23 08:57:32
Steev
I've found Concrete Limiter to be very nice "Correction Tool" and very musical sounding for mild gain stage purposes for instruments getting lost in the mix. It's ill suited for being used as a sound effects plugin. Only time I would use it on an output buss it to compliment or further subtly tweak certain buss compression settings that can't be properly achieved with the compressor's "make up gain".
And of course it's great for just taming the occasional random peak that pushes the meter into the red. I really like the fact that it's simple because it's made to do a simple job, limit overloading peaks without changing dynamics or coloration caused by changing attack and release times.
 
 
Emphasis on mild because, because just like compressors, when used correctly, your not actually supposed to hear or notice them working.
When used incorrectly, as they all too often are as  a weapon of choice for those waging the loudness wars, you are completely crunching the dynamic range where the normally lowest sounds, are raised to equal volume level of the normally highest sounds. there's really no way to control noise and distortion. 
all brick wall limiters when pushed, have a nasty side effect of raising unwanted noises that would stay under the noise floor level, which would not other wise be heard, such as guitar hum and or RF leakage caused by cheap or faulty cables, thumps, vibrations and rumbles transmitted from the floor or desk from mic stands.
 
 In other words, normally you wouldn't hear these noises, such as guitar cable hum until the guitar stops playing because the notes and chords being played are so much louder than the hum.
 But whack it hard with brick wall limiter, the loudest notes played on the guitar are limited to the highest point set on the limiter, which the quietest sounds (hum/RF/distortion) are push up and increased up to the same level.
2018/03/23 09:21:10
John
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.  
2018/03/23 10:19:58
Steev
For dense rock mixes with distorted guitars I highly recommend using the Cakewalk Multiband Compressor on the Master Buss, and if it needs further limiting, the Cakewalk Adaptive Limiter is superb for that and it's spectrum analyzer gives great visual feedback of what gets limited, how much, and what gets increased.
 
Once you get the overall mix sound where you like, the Cakewalk LP (linier phase) EQ can really smooth it out, and polish it up.
 These plugins are all typically designed to be used for fine tuning mastering. Although you can use them on tracks I don't advise that because they are very computer resource intensive processing, and really hit your CPU heavy, and are typically the greatest cause of increasing recording and mixing latency.
2018/03/23 10:25:44
chuckebaby
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.
2018/03/23 10:34:28
Saxon1066
Steev
For dense rock mixes with distorted guitars I highly recommend using the Cakewalk Multiband Compressor on the Master Buss, and if it needs further limiting, the Cakewalk Adaptive Limiter is superb for that and it's spectrum analyzer gives great visual feedback of what gets limited, how much, and what gets increased.
 
Once you get the overall mix sound where you like, the Cakewalk LP (linier phase) EQ can really smooth it out, and polish it up.
 These plugins are all typically designed to be used for fine tuning mastering. Although you can use them on tracks I don't advise that because they are very computer resource intensive processing, and really hit your CPU heavy, and are typically the greatest cause of increasing recording and mixing latency.

I appreciate the advice, Steev!
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