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01-20-2021, 01:27 PM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 1,384
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Disadvantages of having a limitor pushing everything up from the start of a session?
What are some disadvantages of having a limitor pushing everything up to 0db right from the start of a session?
because some actually recommend it..
thanks!
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01-20-2021, 01:44 PM
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#2
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Brooklyn
Posts: 2,613
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Eeek.
Wait, you mean the master or tracks?
For tracks the main one is that the first thing you have to then bring everything down or it's clippo city on the master.
The next would be be that there's no reason to do it.
They mean digital 0 or maybe 0 on the fader? That's sometimes a thing on analog hardware, so that the faders are all even when the music is about balanced, but that doesn't have to do with limiters, just so that if you want to lower a hh you're not lowering it from an inch from the bottom of the fader throw. But that kind of thing is an interface workflow thing. Nothing to do with benefiting from normalizing the levels.
Even on the master I don't see any value. Mix the song and when you've got it close to where you're going to render mixes, make it peak zero minus point whatever. Can't imagine why setting it there on a limiter at the start of a session would be a strategy, but I'm old. Some youngin' can 'splain it to me.
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Last edited by vdubreeze; 01-20-2021 at 01:56 PM.
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01-21-2021, 12:49 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: May 2017
Posts: 3,201
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Not to be harsh sounding... but I have to be honest
The big advantage is that your rendered waveform looks like a sausage. It'll sound like a deepfried turd would taste, but it'll look cool.
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01-21-2021, 01:04 AM
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#4
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: PNW, USA
Posts: 655
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Quote:
Originally Posted by for
What are some disadvantages of having a limitor pushing everything up to 0db right from the start of a session?
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The first and main disadvantage that comes to my mind is that the limiter will be messing with the amplitudes/dynamics of your mix: Have one track that's too 'hot' and the limiter will squash it down and distort the audio, when really you should be dealing with that track alone, turning down the fader, compression, whatever, in a more direct and 'finessed' way. I suppose you should be able to hear the distortion even with the limiter set - and adjust that track down. But it's not always easy to tell. Dynamics are really tricky...
In my view, you should be working with the dynamics of the mix, each track, as freely and unencumbered as possible - which means leaving a decent amount of headroom. If you boost up the gain with a limiter at the beginning, you've just added one more thing to clutter-up and confuse the process. Don't even think about the overall loudness of the piece until you've got the 'mix' right - until you've got the volume, the dynamics, of all the tracks working together well...
The 'dynamic interplay' of the instruments is one thing; the overall loudness of the final mix is another. Keep them separate.
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01-21-2021, 01:29 PM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Posts: 2,779
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This is an odd question because depending on the levels you start with, a limiter can have zero-effect on the sound or a drastic (and possibly undesirable) effect on the sound.
On the other hand, normalizing doesn't affect the sound quality at all. But, you generally wouldn't want to normalize the individual tracks for 0dB peaks before mixing because mixing is summation and you'd just have to adjust-down the master.
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01-21-2021, 03:20 PM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Posts: 1,391
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(Side note: I originally had a different post here with some slightly different information based on some information that I "misremembered". So I'm reposting it without the bad info in it. Pardon the confusion if you had already read the prior post).
I think you can thank the loudness war for this concept.
That said, I think the idea is to put it on your mix bus only... not individual tracks. Advice I've seen seems to say to do it on the mastering stage, and to about -0.1dBFS or -0.2ish, because sometimes peaks can sneak through if you limit right to 0. And yeah it seems to be mainly a mastering thing, so I'd be curious why you received the advice you did, although I'm not saying it's wrong or right.
You might do limiting on SOME individual tracks to reel in some very harsh sounding instruments/synths, for example, but aside from that, I think it's generally done on the mix bus. And it's also typically more of a subtle thing rather than hard limiting and squashing the crap out of everything (i.e. the sausage waveform philbo is talking about). That said, those competing in the loudness war like their sausages
Anyways, I'm no pro on this.. just going by my own YouTube scouring research that I've done over the years.
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01-21-2021, 04:30 PM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: PNW, USA
Posts: 655
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DVDdoug
This is an odd question because depending on the levels you start with, a limiter can have zero-effect on the sound or a drastic (and possibly undesirable) effect on the sound.
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The original question implies that the threshold is being adjusted to make output gain hit 0db... I kind of doubt the original question was...completely sincere. Seems troll-ish to me.
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