groovey1
Will there be any point in continuing to use the Concrete Limiter once we have this?
I know I haven't touched Boost 11 since I got the Concrete Limiter.

The perfect segue to my question in the post previous to yours 
 
They do have a different "sound," especially the harder you push them...and the CL has that bass switch which can be pretty incredible. I didn't stop using the Quadcurve EQ when the LP EQ appeared, and I suspect this is an analogous situation.

Anderton
Think anyone would hear a difference if the two were used on a track?

On a track, probably not. On a full mix, I had no problem hearing the difference in a blind A/B/X, 100% of the time.
 
However, I could also make Pro-L sound worse than AL with little effort. 

Great thread (for the most part). Thanks for the feedback and comparisons. As someone who doesn't own CL or Pro-L, it's good to know the Adaptive Limiter is comparable.

Anderton

Sanderxpander

Anderton

bitflipper

mmarton
Anyone compare this to Pro-L?

Yes. Pro-L remains king of the hill. However, Adaptive Limiter holds up pretty darn good alongside it, even before taking into account the large price difference.

Think anyone would hear a difference if the two were used on a track?

I get your point, truly I do, but I always feel this is a little bit of a lame argument.

It's not a "lame argument," it's a legitimate question but I guess no one is interested in answering it. I don't have a Pro-L, or I wouldn't have to ask...I could do the comparison myself.
 

Excuse me, perhaps I jumped the gun - you seemed to be sticking up for Cakewalk's tools (as you are wont to do, and rightfully so a lot of the time) rather than genuinely asking for a comparison. Sorry if I misinterpreted. Bitflipper answered the question you posed to him so I'll just shut up now.

Sanderxpander
Bitflipper answered the question you posed to him so I'll just shut up now.

Well I actually was hoping for more detail on the nature of the difference, like whether setting them for theoretically the same amount of attack/release sounded the same, or whether there was a correlation between the different characters...but I'll live with "I can tell the difference."
 
It's like when I first started playing with linear-phase EQs. I could tell they sounded different but couldn't quantify it until I set the controls on both standard and linear-phase EQs to the same settings and ran program material through them. 

You can't configure the two identically, because "attack" and "release" mean different things to each of them. Pro-L uses a two-stage process; the attack setting determines when the limiter switches from transient-protection stage to a more conventional dynamics mode. In order to make Pro-L behave like a normal limiter, you have to basically turn off the main feature that sets it apart, namely its unique transient stage. This makes it challenging to perform an apples-to-apples comparison. 

As a mastering limiter, I have been reaching for the Slate Digital FG-X recently. It's quick, transparent and useful. In comparison, I can't get as good results from AL yet (only tried on one master sesh) - gets pumpy easily and not as transparent. However, I can see lots of uses for it and definitely a great tool. I will try again on mastering, maybe this track wasn't a good test, but the FG-X has a good workflow for me which doesn't detract from what I'm trying to achieve too much. I generally work with material that wants to maintain dynamics while being powerful and in this one, single test I couldn't easily get to that with AL.

I found that if you don't have the release set to minimum it gets super pumpy - which, to be fair, is great for some styles of music. With a bit of fiddling, I could get this to sound just as loud and transparent as Waves L2 on a fairly dense metal mix, which is pretty impressive!

After messing with it a bit, I like it overall. It doesn't seem to be quite as transparent as IK Stealth Limiter (at least not with default settings) but very close. The UI is great. I wish more plugins would look at doing GPU acceleration of their UI. Everything flows completely smooth and tracks with the audio flawlessly. Easily the best limiter UI I've seen yet. It also doesn't hit the system too hard (Stealth Limiter in 16x mode is a bit of a hog).
 
On its own, I think it would be a pretty compelling product to stand up to others out there. Particularly for people who want a limiter with some flexibility. I don't imagine Waves would have any trouble selling a product of this class with their kit. As something included with a DAW, well it is absolutely first rate.

My go-to limiter has been the Concrete Limiter for quite a while. In fact, once I got the CL, it replaced my Sonnox Limiter and my Waves L2. There's just something it does to the overall sound that I really like.
With the release of the Adaptive Limiter, I was hopeful that it might be even better than the CL. So far, I haven't been able to get it to sound (to my ears) as good as the CL. 
I wonder which settings on the Adaptive Limiter would be closest to the way the CL effects the signal? Anyone know?