Very common situation:
 
• Mixing with a Master Bus peak limit in mind; for example, let's say I don't want to exceed -3.
• The mix stays well below that, happily at -4.1 or -3.5, but for a very brief instant will hit -2.7 or sometimes -2.0 or something.
• There seldom seems to be any particular transient or peak on any track or folder to account for this.  Maybe the voice was a fraction fuller at the instant of a floor tom at the same time as a guitar down strum, or whatever.  Sometimes I can find the culprit but most often it is a combination of many subtle things.  I mean, I am usually talking about a db or less across 50 tracks; but sometimes maybe 1.5 db
 
It seems a brick wall limiter could fix this without making things sound weird since I'm not cranking the mix and asking it to pull things down 8 db.  I will be sending it a pretty balanced mix in hopes of saving myself hours of detective work.
 
Does this make sense?
And is Blue Tubes a good choice?
 
Thanks.

Its included with X3 Producer, go for it!
X3 Producer I mean...
 
T

Usually that kind of tweak is left for the mastering process, where you can do things like scale individual half-cycles of a waveform instead of just slam a limiter across a bus. Just let the mix develop...if it's not loud enough turn up the monitor.
 
If all you want to do is trap transients while monitoring, the Sonitus multiband works well. Go to the common page, double-click on Ra to set all the ratios to 1, and click the limit button. This also turns the clip LED into an "I'm now limiting" LED. Best of all because it's multiband. limiting will apply only to the bands where it's needed.
 
When you bounce your final mix to send for mastering, disable the multiband (and any other bus effects).
 
 

What Craig said. When I mix, I use a two compressors on the MB. The first one is usually a LA-2A and I check it occasionally to make sure it's only taking 1/2 a db of gain reduction. The second one I set it according to the loudest part of the track so it barely moves. I remove them both at mix down. I usually aim the mix at about -8db though. I'm not bothered about it going over to much as it's not the aim to make levels perfect for the MB. My concern is the balance of everything in the track.
 
What I'll never understand is using limiters in a mix anywhere. My feeling is, if you have to use a limiter to tame the drums, for instance, then your drums are too loud. Of course, everything is subjective and nothing is set in stone.

Thanks guys!  What I am trying to do is to get a relatively even mix for the mastering engineer so he/she doesn't have to do too much compression just because of a transient I missed.  Perhaps I am worrying too much and should just lower the whole thing a db or two. :-)  Still fantastic advice here.  Thanks.

Guitarpima
What I'll never understand is using limiters in a mix anywhere. My feeling is, if you have to use a limiter to tame the drums, for instance, then your drums are too loud. Of course, everything is subjective and nothing is set in stone.

Exactly. Actually, I use limiters on drums if I want to bring up the ambience. The peaks don't sound as squashed as they would if I used compression for the same result.

konradh
Thanks guys!  What I am trying to do is to get a relatively even mix for the mastering engineer so he/she doesn't have to do too much compression just because of a transient I missed.

In general mastering engineers don't like material that is "pre-mastered" in any way because it limits their options. Besides, they usually have better tools/techniques for accomplishing what you want to accomplish.

Colour me stupid. I just started using the Concrete Limiter on my drum buss and love it. So I should stop using it? When I do my tracks I aim for peaks around -6db and the limiter really adds body to the drum tracks. What other methods should I employ first?

Doesn't sound stupid to me at all.  Compressing/limiting a drum bus is a classic technique and you can hear it on Led Zeppelin, Beatles, and 1,000s of others (although my style doesn't call for it.)

ampfixer
Colour me stupid. I just started using the Concrete Limiter on my drum buss and love it. So I should stop using it? When I do my tracks I aim for peaks around -6db and the limiter really adds body to the drum tracks. What other methods should I employ first?

See post #6. If you're stupid, so am I. CL is my limiter of choice for that application.