Thanks for the feedback, folks. Much appreciated.

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.

Excellent and thoughtful analysis. And agreed on pretty much every point.

benjaminfrog

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.

As much as I like the Precision Limiter (very much in fact) and the UAD stuff in general, there's a few things to consider:

1) Unless you have a very powerful UAD2 card, DSP power is at a finite premium 
2) The plugs are still 32-bit (although my understanding is that will change at some point)
3) The UAD card itself introduces latency (as all DSP solutions do)

As much as I like the Precision Limiter (very much in fact) and the UAD stuff in general, there's a few things to consider:

1) Unless you have a very powerful UAD2 card, DSP power is at a finite premium 
2) The plugs are still 32-bit (although my understanding is that will change at some point)
3) The UAD card itself introduces latency (as all DSP solutions do)

Thanks for chiming in, Brandon. Good points.
 
I'm not especially concerned about the first two, though, as I've got a couple cards and use relatively few tracks and UA say x64 is coming this year. I'm interested in number three, however, as I've started using limiters on individual tracks, not just one in the mastering stage. Can you speak to how much of a latency improvement I'd see using the Concrete Limiter vs. the Precision? Thanks.
 
Also, it probably won't do any good, but, as they say, it can't hurt to ask: I'd really like to give you guys $10. Of the three PC add-ons you have available for this price, the only one that doesn't hold interest for me is the one that's available to me, the expander/gate. Any chance you'd offer up the limiter or the compressor for that price?
 
A boy can dream.

Doing a "concrete limiter" search of the forum I get one result - from 2009?!?!

Don't use the forum's Search feature. It sucks. Use Google Search instead, e.g.
    concrete limiter site:cakewalk.com
Just tried it, and it returned 746 results. Of course, as soon as I click the Post Message button it'll be 747.

Thanks for the tip, bitflipper.

I purchased Ozone 5 and I like the limiter included.  I wouldn't think of using a limiter on an individual track.  I probably won't purchase this limiter although it looks great!  If I did, it would just to add it to my collection. At $49 it's tempting but will save the $$$ for something else.

In any case another nice offering from the folks at Cakewalk!

dlesaux


I wouldn't think of using a limiter on an individual track.

Nor me, I wonder if we're in a minority here who are missing something fundamental? 
  
Do any of you use a limiter on a track?
 
Or even on a 'sub' bus for that matter?
 
I'm genuinely interested.

Hi Steve,

I use one sometimes on a sub buss (usually drums). Very rarely on a track. I do a lot of full band recording. Very little tracking.

-Brian

Eric Beam:

It prevents intersample clips with the best of them.

 
What are you using to test this? I've tried Ozone 5's new meters, ToneBoosters EBULoudness, and SSL's X-ISM meter, and they all indicate that the Concrete Limiter lets through intersample peaks. I've also run the r128-scanner from the libebur128 project and it also shows a true peak level higher than I've set the threshold for on the Concrete Limiter.