The one that kills me is when the interface freaks out and instantly screams at max, and it takes a reboot for me when that happens.
 
But what I did was to move the monitors to a separate power strip that is still part of the ground circuit, so as to not cause ground hum issues.  Anyways. I have this power strip mounted up off the floor where I can almost instantly reach it to cut power to only those speakers.  It's not perfect, but I have surprised myself at how quickly I can move at 2 in the morning when I have to reach for the on/off switch for that power strip.
 
It is not as elegant as a limiter, but it seems to work OK for me.
 
Bob Bone

I agree with Dave on this.  Even with my Mackie HR824's the sound pressure level can be huge before the protection kicks in and sometimes it still doesn't.  Even when I am running for my life!
 
Robert made me laugh with that one. Yes it is amazing how fast you can move when required to!  My Yamaha digital mixer actually features a good old analog pot on the signal feeding the monitors so all you have to do is turn it down.
 
Then again you could also use Studio One instead. I have never heard any gut wrenching speaker destroying sounds coming form that. 

I remember Reason had a big bug where it would emit a +40dB spike. It killed one of my speaker sets. Luckily this was a cheaper pair of Creative speakers from years ago.
 

Also remember you can use a bus compressor as a limiter where you just want to tame transients rather than cut the top end of them. A ratio of 10:1 and -20dB threshold should do the trick. Of course experiment with the threshold to find your preference.
 

I have Concrete Limiter in the Master Bus 'Normal' template so it always loads enabled; because I always do extreme experimental stuff.
 
When I go to a final mix I might leave it in or bypass it - I don't usually get final peaks near 0 dB.
 
I've not noticed any audible differences, but I'm just a 'hobbyist'.
 
 
 

I am a serious believer in the ability of a limiter to save your speakers.  A band I was in didn't have one. I found one in a rack mount configuration and bought it.  I installed it in our rack and several weeks later we had a flashpot explode like a grenade.  It blew out every monitor speaker we had and all the speakers on stage with open back cabinets.  In our 3000w PA system, we only lost one 15" speaker in the bass bins.  Everything else survived.
 
In the studio, I would not use a software limiter in the master bin. I would opt for a stereo limiter in a hardware configuration that was set to limit the big peaks from wherever they originate. Strictly hardware based on the output of the interface signal path to the monitors. That way, it only affects the finished signal to the monitors.

When your audio leaves your DAW, anything over 0dBFS is going to be clipped at 0dBFS anyway. 
 
A limiter inside your DAW set at 0dBFS might make it sound a little less ugly when it starts to clip, but that's about it.

drew brings up a good point. If you are working at say K-20 and -20 dB FS = +4dbu and you suddenly get a slammed rms signal at 0 dB FS then the interface is now spitting out +24 dBu which is rather loud. That is why limiters in the digital domain on your stereo buss don't actually help much.
 
A hardware limiter patched between interface and monitors is going to do the job properly. You just have to set the threshold so most of time it is doing nothing but will catch a huge level change.

drewfx1
When your audio leaves your DAW, anything over 0dBFS is going to be clipped at 0dBFS anyway. 

 
You can export 64-bit floating point WAV audio data and Sonar will save all that data faithfully up to +100 db or whatever the max float number is (10**308 IEEE 754).
 
It's just that very few things are around to use that kind of data.
 
Sound Forge can read that data and manipulate it, but it will not display beyond 0dB, it looks like it clips because the display does not zoom. Neither does the Sonar track display as far as I know. But the data is still valid.
 
This is an unfortunate residue that comes from the tape oriented background of pro audio.
 
True digital audio has a very wide gamut, our physical transducers are far more limited.
 

arachnaut

drewfx1
When your audio leaves your DAW, anything over 0dBFS is going to be clipped at 0dBFS anyway. 

 
You can export 64-bit floating point WAV audio data and Sonar will save all that data faithfully up to +100 db or whatever the max float number is (10**308 IEEE 754).

Yes, but not over your audio interface, which is what we're talking about here.
 
And actually it turns out that +100 dB is a ridiculously small fraction of the maximum value available in 32 bit floating point.
 
Luckily your speakers couldn't reproduce that, because if you add that 100dB to fairly common loudish listening levels you actually end up with a pressure level that approaches the level of the shock wave from a nuclear blast a few miles away from your listening position.
 
And no, I'm not kidding.