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.

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

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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....

I went ahead and purchased it. I did not already have Expanded, so I bought that for $10 and the Brickwall limiter for $49. I think it sounds a whole lot better than Boost11 (which is pretty bad), but is not as transparent as TLS Pocket Limiter which, to my ears, is one of the most transparent limiters available at any cost, but it's FREE! I also think the limiter built into the Sonitus Multiband Compressor is pretty good. So in conclusion, if you can get it cheap, it's worth it for the convenience of having it in the Pro Channel. It's also sonically different to some other limiters, so maybe useful on that front too.

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

Great stuff!

I've been listening to it in conjunction with my other goto master limiter, the T-Rack singles Brick Wall Lim, and to my ears they're not a million miles apart sonically.

And the Cake offering does have the added benefit of a more benign drain on resources. The T-Racks plugs are notoriously hungry beasties.