What would you recommend as a limiter?

You are right, I can solve this without a limiter, but I have this issue sometime with other tracks and other instruments, so I think a tools can help!

A limiter is just right to chop peaks! Clipping does cut off the peaks, distorting the characteristics, a limiter will squash the peaks, leading to a subtle click (or even none, if it is lookahead), but keeping the sound signature of the peak.

But you don’t need to use a designated limiter for the task. A compressor can often be dialed to work as a limiter, too, if it allows infinite ratio! It just needs full ratio and immediate attack. Just like I have described above. I normally use the standard renoise compressor (not bus) for the peak limiting task that way, not a designated limiter, it works very well for me. Usually limiters are rather tuned to squash audio and prevent clipping, like on the master, not to just chop peaks.

If you wish to fade the track, don’t forget to fade after the limiter, not before, else the peaks will not get faded right.

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Yes, that’s what I want to keep!

I’ll make some try in a few days with some of suggestions here, I’ll say if the results seems ok. ^^

:grin: Yes, this could happen. I would buy this one, but I have to think about it. 149 € for a compressor? I could buy a whole new Synth VST for this price.

Me too. :+1:

Curious why you guys (@OopsIFly too) use the regular compressor over the bus compressor for this application… I always use the bus compressor for everything, though I’m sure I don’t know why! :upside_down_face:

EDIT: nevermind, had a look at the compressor… I see that the ratio ascends to LIMIT on the reg compressor, but only goes to 20:1 on the bus compressor. makes sense to me now. Good to know that the compressor can be used in that way, thanks!

I always use the compressor because it’s easy to use, its useable for several reasons and it does its job. Never thought about using the bus compressor, I don’t see an advantage, but maybe someone can enlighten me and my ignorance. :wink:

I don’t use the compressor with ratio limit completely like a limiter that often. Usually I just want to duck the peaks only more or less slighty, so I adjust the fastest attack possible and a fast release with a ratio between 2:1 and 8:1, mostly something around 4:1 (depends on the type of instrument). I don’t do this with every instrument, but I do this everytime with drums and pads (or similar) in each track, just before the signal arrives at the busses, which are also compressed, but in a different way. Using a limiter is only happening in the master channel at the very end of the whole mixing process and is part of the mastering. That’s how I do it. But I don’t think that what I’m doing is the holy grale, probably there are more methods or “tricks” for getting a better result. Next time I will try using a clipper, just like stated in this thread, but together with a limiter (Renoise maximizer). I would never use a clipper only. I’m curious if the result would become better. Maybe, maybe not, we’ll see…

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I like the bus compressor’s soft knee flexibility… great for a more transparent sounding compression that is applied gradually as the threshold value is crossed. I can’t pretend to understand much more about it than that, lol. Think the regular compressor will see more use in my workflow now that I know about the hard limit!

Soft Clipper and/or Peak compressor

Clip a part of the peaks and compress them

Negligible saturation
Minimum bit-depth degradation

good ratio

I finally come back after a few tests:

:grinning: Better results, and easy to do, with the Limiter6 (Limiter6 VST)
The waveform is still preserved, no hardcut, good! I keep it in my tool box!

:thinking: The Renoise native maximizer could be usefull in some cases, but cut the waveform too hard for what I wanted here.

:slightly_smiling_face: Good results also with the Renoise native compressor, could be an alternative!

Thanks for everyone’s advices, I learned things studying all that too. :+1:

Can make compression,limiting,expansion…

Fircomp2 is amazing , all the hype at gearslutz is really justified
https://jonvaudio.com/fircomp2/

if you need somewhat final limiter, then sonnox limiter, TDR limiter or toneboosters barricade. if you need I it for drums for example, I’d play with soft clipping saturation and distortion, and use very subtle limiting for perhaps final drum group, since it can make a good sounding drum track go lifeless… I use a lot of Airwindows clipping plugins like tape… channel… adclip… to control dynamics

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My favorite free plugins for limiting is limiter6, MCompressor and i also think FerricTDS works quite alright for limiting though it’s actually a tape dynamics simulator, but it has a limiter and sounds pretty good.

Snare peaks is not bad thing as well as dynamic range. If you like them less try different mix. Limiters often do more bad than good things.

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Welcome on the forum :slight_smile:

Your are right, here I wanted to learn how to limit signal properly to avoid saturation, that could be useful. But of course the limiter is not the only solution, there are many others. :+1:

Weiss MM-1 is sometimes a smart weapon, too. Add SPL transient designer before and just lower a bit of the attack and increase a bit of the sustain (on the master channel).