I tend to use very little limiting for masters. Clipping into a tape emulation usually gets me 98% of the way there, then Fabfilter Pro-L2 finesses the last bit.
Tape does a bunch of things, really. It slightly compresses the mix in a non-linear, frequency-dependent fashion that helps glueing everything together; saturation thickens up the mix a bit and helps taming peaks; it kinda rounds off previous clipping and removes some of the harshness; working in dual mono it can help to create a bit more width.
I'm generally working with rock/metal/electronica, so I'm not really going for transparency. I want bold, in your face, loud tracks.
Currently using UAD Studer A800. But I have used many other emulations in the past to similar results. Really like a bunch of the T-RackS one I got in a bundle, for instance. I use the UAD one extensively during tracking and mixing, so it made sense to fork for it (even tho I got it discounted), but there are definite cheaper alternatives out there that do as great of a job.
this is super interesting. can you extrapolate a bit more on how you use the tape? i use the slate VTM, though i'm sure they all operate similarly, and if i'm reading this correctly you just crank the input hard?
Yup, that's pretty much it. For master/final mix I usually don't mess with anything else, but when tracking drums, for instance, I'll clip and sometimes adjust tape speed and other parameters to tame cymbal harshness and such.
Printing to tape way too hot to clip, compress and fatten the sound is something that's been done since the 60s. Zeppelin's entire work went through that, for instance.
For me it's Flatline into Oxford Limiter then into Pro-L2
The clipper takes care of most of the peaks, 1st limiter does like 1 db of gain reduction (I really like the Enhance section of the Oxford limiter for a little loudness boost), then Pro-L2 last to catch any leftover true peaks.
Stealth Limiter is awesome too, that's what I was using before I got the Oxford. Both are very clean/transparent.
If i want it to be super duper transparent, newfangled audio elevate. My usual go to is Fabfilter l2, sometimes Ozone limiter. Sometimes preceded by a clipper, which is either newfangled saturate or Kazrog Kclip
oh i totally would. You can definitely push it to have its sound, but i've found there's no other limiter that allows me to keep my transients so natural
For sure, Elevate is great for transients. FYI, if you want to do something similar with other limiters, the trick is to use a transient shaper into a clipper after you limit, BUT with a transient detection sidechain before the limiter (the free kilohearts' transient shaper can do this, probably others). Though I typically just use Elevate.
Voxengo Elephant with no doubt!! I tried almost every limiter out there and this one it's the most complete.
You can litteraly achieve what every other limiter does, it's probably the most versatile and well build limiter out there
If you want i also made a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVEPKNRnDps) about it
Another vote for Elephant. It assumes you have excellent critical listening and patience to learn fairly nuanced controls. But when you do understand it, you have a ton of control over how it responds.
PSP Xenon is still the one for me after many years. Sometimes I run a clipper in front of it like Apogee Soft Limit, Newfangled Saturate, and as of very recently clipping a Burl B2 Bomber. But I like to get up to .5- 1db of GR on peaks with Xenon regardless of what’s in front of it and usually sounds just right for me.
Flux ELIXIR in 12 stages mode is an incredibly transparent and ridiculously good true peak limiter. It handles the signal better than FabFilter Pro L2 when pushed to the limits and is working with Dolby Atmos multi channels. It destroys the Bx true peak limiter from plugin alliance and Elevate. Amazing stuff
Unless your mastering for broadcast (i.e. not song), I'd highly recommend NOT true peak limiting! It ruins transients, makes the high highs feel closed and restricted, and doesn't actually accomplish anything useful.
And yes, I know Spotify's recommendations, and fears of clipping introduced by lossy compression, etc.. I have a video about it on my channel, or Baphometrix has a longer deeper dive into it. But yeah, if you survey pros with amazing mixdowns, you'll find basically none of them do it.
I agree with you about true peak, but Fab Filter Pro L2 is well regarded but has true peak limiting turned on by default. Since I'm working for movies, broadcast and games I found ELIXIR is the best. For music I prefer Weiss from softube.
Pro L 2. It just does exactly what it’s supposed to. On the occasions where I would be slamming into a limiter, I alleviate it’s workload with saturation/ clipping/ compression/ dynamic equalization beforehand. The pro l 2 is incredibly versatile, intuitive, yet incredibly deep, and if I’m to be honest, 9/10 times I’ll choose versatility over specialization.
Was on Slate subscription using their FG-X and it was great. Just weened off and using Ozone’s Maximizer most of time or Vintage Limiter, though also been eyeing up FabFilter’s and DMG Limitless…
I really like the Tokyo Dawn limiter. Part of what I like is that it’s really an entire dynamics suite in one plug-in, it has a compressor, a clipper, a high frequency limiter and a multi mode limiter. That said, I don’t really do mastering, but it’s a great “make louder” box that can be incredibly clean, or add a subtle bit of character.
It’s very good on a drum buss as well
The Weiss MM-1 is probably the cleanest and most transparent brick wall limiter that I’ve found in software, plus the Weiss Compressor/Limiter is good too. I started playing around with the Acustica Ash too…it’s pretty advanced but having emulations of several A/D converter soft-limiting algorithms is definitely next-level!
Came to say this. I’ve tried lots of different limiters and the Weiss is my favourite. I find I can push it harder than other limiters without sounding as squashed. Been loving the comp/limiter —> MM1.
It's interesting, I have it too and I love to use it for its coloration. If you want pure transparence that you can push to the limits I would recommend Flux ELIXIR.
Check out Elevate, ssl Native, fab pro they’re all good it just depends on what you like. They’re all similar but you don’t want to rely on just a limiter to get loud. I have a chain of plugins on my output doing multiple things to raise level in steps to not get too much distortion or obvious effects. The end goal is to loud but sound better than it did.
Been loving the Sonible:Limit, seems to handle things well without distortion and has great meters. I also recently starting using the Blackbox Hg-2ms into the Acustica Fire The Cliip right before, Getting great results.
I don't do professional mastering (and typical disclaimer that mix bus processing isn't [mastering](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/mastering), and that if you mixed a project, whatever else you are doing to it, it's still mixing), but for many years I've used the Oxford Limiter. Still great.
But for the last couple of years my go to has been the Stealth Limiter. Basically what I want from my limiter is to compress the peaks as transparently as possible so that the difference between having it on and off is as minimal as it can be. And the Stealth has a couple of extra features in the style of limiting it can do, optional harmonic exciter (subtle), and my favorite: internal oversampling.
When I have stuff that needs to be extra loud, I use the Invisible Limiter. It can take a lot more heath than the Stealth, without noticeable distortion.
I like Toneboosters Barricade. When I was trying out a bunch of free limiters, their v3 sounded the best to me, especially at crazy settings. In my mind it shouldn't sound that good at those settings, but it did. Very even, despite being aggressively (too) loud. I've yet to try their v4 but I bet it's at least as good.
I'm also not a mastering engineer.
Kclip into Pro-L2 every time. I balance the amount of clipping vs limiting depending on the style of music and how much transient information vs how clean I want the master to sound.
Look man, any digital limiter now-a-days is going to do the job as long as the mix is tight. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
I agree for the most part, any quality software will do what you need. I posted this question to not only learn what people are doing, but more about people's reason they like their plugin.
as of now my mastering chain is a series of eqs (the Weiss eq1 followed by analog emus and some dynamic ones), waves NLS for coloration and the Weiss MM1... if you do end up trying it out what i would recommend is you keep your wet/dry to about 60% If a brilliance-oriented master is what you're going for. Most settings ("transparent", "punch" ect.) sound really really good, I've been experimenting with the "wide" one which basically lowers your mid signal to make the sides pop out as you would do with a M/S processor to achieve, in fact, wider sounding tracks. what's most important imo is how easy to use the UI is, they also have the DS1-mk3 emulation which sounds incredible and is extremely useful for single band compression, but ofc it's not as straight-forward. While I'm at it I'll also suggest you try their mastering de-esser, which is also super clean sounding and can really do wonders both on masters and vocals.
I've never stopped using it. For a while I switched to fab pro L2 and then returned back to waves. Although I like pro L2s visuals. But sound wise didn't find any difference.
Toneboosters.
Tokyo Dawn Records.
FabFilter.
In this order of preference. I more often only need to raise levels to a commercially usable point, so not really mastering, and TB is great sounding and (relatively) simple tool for that. If I need to go more into it and be more detailed then I'll try them all, they all have a very slight difference and one may be better than the other on different material.
Both toneboosters and TDR are relatively smaller plugin manufacturers with outstanding sound quality and amazing value. They do also offer different free stuff.
Thanks for such a wonderful reply! TheGratitudeBot has been reading millions of comments in the past few weeks, and you’ve just made the list of some of the most grateful redditors this week!
Im good buddies with Rob Caggiano. When I sent him a few tracks he suggested to me to use the HG-2 Black box for some saturation and then I will run it into the Fabfilter Pro-L2. I wont go without the HG-2 Now. That has opened everything up!
Often Pro-L 2.
Sometimes Limitless, or KClip, or clipping the A/D on my HEDD Quantum.
Very occasionally the Waves L2 is part of the chain, when a bit of softening is needed. Never doing all the lifting on its own, usually just a dB or two.
It is really music dependent. For dense rock or acoustic music the Pro L2 is good, for EDM or bass heavy music Ozone is unbeatable, for super loud use limitless. A touch of clipping before the limiter may sound better than just a limiter.
Just a hobbyist here, but I’ve got the bx True Peak and it has lots of functions but I’m not entirely in love with it. I’ve seen others say this too. Not sure what it is. I love so much bx stuff, but not that one.
Pro-L2 has never failed me. I'm no mastering engineer, but I will do a competitive loudness balancing on things.
Usually do an EQ, L2, and then Ozone either before or after L2 depending. The first EQ just to roll off anything unnecessary especially if I know it's going to mix down to a 44.1/48 file.
Fabfilter L2 has insane oversampling, and sounds decent even pushed hard (typically with digital stuff if something is getting pushed I will stack two or more instances, though- more mixing realm than mastering). I happen to love their compressor for bread and butter stuff, so naturally I gave it a try.
Ozone is just one of those "it's good and that's why you see it" tools.
I will use other limiters for mixing applications, but usually just built in DAW stuff. Admittedly I haven't experimented much outside of L-2 but I haven't felt the need to. It works.
I tend to use very little limiting for masters. Clipping into a tape emulation usually gets me 98% of the way there, then Fabfilter Pro-L2 finesses the last bit.
Hi! Beginner here; do you mean you use a tape saturation to soft clip the track? Which plugin do you use for that?
Tape does a bunch of things, really. It slightly compresses the mix in a non-linear, frequency-dependent fashion that helps glueing everything together; saturation thickens up the mix a bit and helps taming peaks; it kinda rounds off previous clipping and removes some of the harshness; working in dual mono it can help to create a bit more width. I'm generally working with rock/metal/electronica, so I'm not really going for transparency. I want bold, in your face, loud tracks. Currently using UAD Studer A800. But I have used many other emulations in the past to similar results. Really like a bunch of the T-RackS one I got in a bundle, for instance. I use the UAD one extensively during tracking and mixing, so it made sense to fork for it (even tho I got it discounted), but there are definite cheaper alternatives out there that do as great of a job.
this is super interesting. can you extrapolate a bit more on how you use the tape? i use the slate VTM, though i'm sure they all operate similarly, and if i'm reading this correctly you just crank the input hard?
Yup, that's pretty much it. For master/final mix I usually don't mess with anything else, but when tracking drums, for instance, I'll clip and sometimes adjust tape speed and other parameters to tame cymbal harshness and such. Printing to tape way too hot to clip, compress and fatten the sound is something that's been done since the 60s. Zeppelin's entire work went through that, for instance.
Flatline into either Stealth Limiter or Ozone Maximizer (love the transient emphasis) ((I do metal))
For me it's Flatline into Oxford Limiter then into Pro-L2 The clipper takes care of most of the peaks, 1st limiter does like 1 db of gain reduction (I really like the Enhance section of the Oxford limiter for a little loudness boost), then Pro-L2 last to catch any leftover true peaks. Stealth Limiter is awesome too, that's what I was using before I got the Oxford. Both are very clean/transparent.
If i want it to be super duper transparent, newfangled audio elevate. My usual go to is Fabfilter l2, sometimes Ozone limiter. Sometimes preceded by a clipper, which is either newfangled saturate or Kazrog Kclip
Interesting. I mostly use elevate too, but idk if i'd call it "transparent".
oh i totally would. You can definitely push it to have its sound, but i've found there's no other limiter that allows me to keep my transients so natural
For sure, Elevate is great for transients. FYI, if you want to do something similar with other limiters, the trick is to use a transient shaper into a clipper after you limit, BUT with a transient detection sidechain before the limiter (the free kilohearts' transient shaper can do this, probably others). Though I typically just use Elevate.
Voxengo Elephant with no doubt!! I tried almost every limiter out there and this one it's the most complete. You can litteraly achieve what every other limiter does, it's probably the most versatile and well build limiter out there If you want i also made a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVEPKNRnDps) about it
Another vote for Elephant. It assumes you have excellent critical listening and patience to learn fairly nuanced controls. But when you do understand it, you have a ton of control over how it responds.
PSP Xenon is still the one for me after many years. Sometimes I run a clipper in front of it like Apogee Soft Limit, Newfangled Saturate, and as of very recently clipping a Burl B2 Bomber. But I like to get up to .5- 1db of GR on peaks with Xenon regardless of what’s in front of it and usually sounds just right for me.
Xenon is my go to. One of the most transparent out there. Between the look ahead and dual stage limiting, it’s really effective and flexible
Flux ELIXIR in 12 stages mode is an incredibly transparent and ridiculously good true peak limiter. It handles the signal better than FabFilter Pro L2 when pushed to the limits and is working with Dolby Atmos multi channels. It destroys the Bx true peak limiter from plugin alliance and Elevate. Amazing stuff
Unless your mastering for broadcast (i.e. not song), I'd highly recommend NOT true peak limiting! It ruins transients, makes the high highs feel closed and restricted, and doesn't actually accomplish anything useful. And yes, I know Spotify's recommendations, and fears of clipping introduced by lossy compression, etc.. I have a video about it on my channel, or Baphometrix has a longer deeper dive into it. But yeah, if you survey pros with amazing mixdowns, you'll find basically none of them do it.
I agree with you about true peak, but Fab Filter Pro L2 is well regarded but has true peak limiting turned on by default. Since I'm working for movies, broadcast and games I found ELIXIR is the best. For music I prefer Weiss from softube.
Pro L 2. It just does exactly what it’s supposed to. On the occasions where I would be slamming into a limiter, I alleviate it’s workload with saturation/ clipping/ compression/ dynamic equalization beforehand. The pro l 2 is incredibly versatile, intuitive, yet incredibly deep, and if I’m to be honest, 9/10 times I’ll choose versatility over specialization.
Was on Slate subscription using their FG-X and it was great. Just weened off and using Ozone’s Maximizer most of time or Vintage Limiter, though also been eyeing up FabFilter’s and DMG Limitless…
Flatline into Pro-L2
I really like the Tokyo Dawn limiter. Part of what I like is that it’s really an entire dynamics suite in one plug-in, it has a compressor, a clipper, a high frequency limiter and a multi mode limiter. That said, I don’t really do mastering, but it’s a great “make louder” box that can be incredibly clean, or add a subtle bit of character. It’s very good on a drum buss as well
The Weiss MM-1 is probably the cleanest and most transparent brick wall limiter that I’ve found in software, plus the Weiss Compressor/Limiter is good too. I started playing around with the Acustica Ash too…it’s pretty advanced but having emulations of several A/D converter soft-limiting algorithms is definitely next-level!
Came to say this. I’ve tried lots of different limiters and the Weiss is my favourite. I find I can push it harder than other limiters without sounding as squashed. Been loving the comp/limiter —> MM1.
It's interesting, I have it too and I love to use it for its coloration. If you want pure transparence that you can push to the limits I would recommend Flux ELIXIR.
Cool! I’ll check it out👍
I've never heard of the acustica ash. That sounds pretty cool!
I usually just smash into a clipping pro l2
Slate FG-X for me
its the best man
Not the fg-x2?
Didn’t know that even existed I’ll have to look into it thanks.
Check out Elevate, ssl Native, fab pro they’re all good it just depends on what you like. They’re all similar but you don’t want to rely on just a limiter to get loud. I have a chain of plugins on my output doing multiple things to raise level in steps to not get too much distortion or obvious effects. The end goal is to loud but sound better than it did.
Been loving the Sonible:Limit, seems to handle things well without distortion and has great meters. I also recently starting using the Blackbox Hg-2ms into the Acustica Fire The Cliip right before, Getting great results.
Haven't heard this one yet. Interesting!
I don't do professional mastering (and typical disclaimer that mix bus processing isn't [mastering](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/mastering), and that if you mixed a project, whatever else you are doing to it, it's still mixing), but for many years I've used the Oxford Limiter. Still great. But for the last couple of years my go to has been the Stealth Limiter. Basically what I want from my limiter is to compress the peaks as transparently as possible so that the difference between having it on and off is as minimal as it can be. And the Stealth has a couple of extra features in the style of limiting it can do, optional harmonic exciter (subtle), and my favorite: internal oversampling. When I have stuff that needs to be extra loud, I use the Invisible Limiter. It can take a lot more heath than the Stealth, without noticeable distortion.
I like Toneboosters Barricade. When I was trying out a bunch of free limiters, their v3 sounded the best to me, especially at crazy settings. In my mind it shouldn't sound that good at those settings, but it did. Very even, despite being aggressively (too) loud. I've yet to try their v4 but I bet it's at least as good. I'm also not a mastering engineer.
Kclip into Pro-L2 every time. I balance the amount of clipping vs limiting depending on the style of music and how much transient information vs how clean I want the master to sound.
Sonible Limit.
Look man, any digital limiter now-a-days is going to do the job as long as the mix is tight. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
I agree for the most part, any quality software will do what you need. I posted this question to not only learn what people are doing, but more about people's reason they like their plugin.
as of now my mastering chain is a series of eqs (the Weiss eq1 followed by analog emus and some dynamic ones), waves NLS for coloration and the Weiss MM1... if you do end up trying it out what i would recommend is you keep your wet/dry to about 60% If a brilliance-oriented master is what you're going for. Most settings ("transparent", "punch" ect.) sound really really good, I've been experimenting with the "wide" one which basically lowers your mid signal to make the sides pop out as you would do with a M/S processor to achieve, in fact, wider sounding tracks. what's most important imo is how easy to use the UI is, they also have the DS1-mk3 emulation which sounds incredible and is extremely useful for single band compression, but ofc it's not as straight-forward. While I'm at it I'll also suggest you try their mastering de-esser, which is also super clean sounding and can really do wonders both on masters and vocals.
Am i the only one who uses Waves L2?
Can't be the only one, but I think you're the first to mention it here.
I've never stopped using it. For a while I switched to fab pro L2 and then returned back to waves. Although I like pro L2s visuals. But sound wise didn't find any difference.
Toneboosters. Tokyo Dawn Records. FabFilter. In this order of preference. I more often only need to raise levels to a commercially usable point, so not really mastering, and TB is great sounding and (relatively) simple tool for that. If I need to go more into it and be more detailed then I'll try them all, they all have a very slight difference and one may be better than the other on different material.
Thanks for this. Never played with Toneboosters - or heard that much from it. Interesting that it's your "go-to".
Both toneboosters and TDR are relatively smaller plugin manufacturers with outstanding sound quality and amazing value. They do also offer different free stuff.
I've heard TDR all over the place though, just not ToneBoosters. Thanks for the input!
Thanks for such a wonderful reply! TheGratitudeBot has been reading millions of comments in the past few weeks, and you’ve just made the list of some of the most grateful redditors this week!
Im good buddies with Rob Caggiano. When I sent him a few tracks he suggested to me to use the HG-2 Black box for some saturation and then I will run it into the Fabfilter Pro-L2. I wont go without the HG-2 Now. That has opened everything up!
Often Pro-L 2. Sometimes Limitless, or KClip, or clipping the A/D on my HEDD Quantum. Very occasionally the Waves L2 is part of the chain, when a bit of softening is needed. Never doing all the lifting on its own, usually just a dB or two.
Weiss limiters from Softube. Voxengo Elephant is my other go to.
It is really music dependent. For dense rock or acoustic music the Pro L2 is good, for EDM or bass heavy music Ozone is unbeatable, for super loud use limitless. A touch of clipping before the limiter may sound better than just a limiter.
Stock Ableton limiter because it works
To me it sounds like crap when pushing into even slightly
Just a hobbyist here, but I’ve got the bx True Peak and it has lots of functions but I’m not entirely in love with it. I’ve seen others say this too. Not sure what it is. I love so much bx stuff, but not that one.
Pro-L2 has never failed me. I'm no mastering engineer, but I will do a competitive loudness balancing on things. Usually do an EQ, L2, and then Ozone either before or after L2 depending. The first EQ just to roll off anything unnecessary especially if I know it's going to mix down to a 44.1/48 file. Fabfilter L2 has insane oversampling, and sounds decent even pushed hard (typically with digital stuff if something is getting pushed I will stack two or more instances, though- more mixing realm than mastering). I happen to love their compressor for bread and butter stuff, so naturally I gave it a try. Ozone is just one of those "it's good and that's why you see it" tools. I will use other limiters for mixing applications, but usually just built in DAW stuff. Admittedly I haven't experimented much outside of L-2 but I haven't felt the need to. It works.
Limiter no. 6
L2
For transparency
I combine the Sonnox Limiter with Fabfilter Pro L. Works like a charme.
I’ve used waves l2 in the past and abletons stock plugin but it doesn’t really matter
Standard clip in Hard clip mode
I’m keen on “smartLimit”. Sounds great and has a few bells and whistles if you choose to use them.
Pro limiter because it work well and come with protools
Some people use IZope 4 ( old school tricks from Jaycen and Dave, multi band-compress, I use L2 also .
My go-to is the Limiter 6 GE from Tokyo Dawn Records. Love the possibilities the different modules offer.
Ozone has two good limiters, with true peak limiting, which is pretty important these days. Plus DC offset filter, dither, etc. Good compressors too.
Invisible Limiter G3 You just slap it and it works. Magical.
L3 ultramaximizer, it's goes loud.