I recently bought Voxengo's GlissEQ and Crunchessor, and I am (almost) ready to buy Voxengo's critically acclaimed Elephant Limiter, but I thought I'd ask this question first:

Is there any free VST limiter out there that can Give you 95%+ of the sound quality that Voxengo or other high end commercial developers offer?

For example - I downloaded TLs_Maximizer some time back, and it sounds pretty darn good to me. I have also played a bit with the limiter sections in multi comps like Sweetboy's T-Sledge and SinusWeb's TripleComp.

I'm looking for opinions on how these and/or other freeware/shareware plugs rank to the "experienced ears" out there.

Also, even though my examples above are hard limiters, I'm also interested in opinions about soft limiters (with a release control) for those drum squashing/shaping sessions...

Thanks.

for free (and IMHO) ...

... youve ALREADY found the best free limiter by far ...

slainte rob

although i quite like the way endorphin limits too ...

slainte rob

pHz wrote:

for free (and IMHO) ... ... youve ALREADY found the best free limiter by far ... slainte rob

Thanks, pHz. Do you consider it a waste to buy a commerical hard limiter then?

EnzymeX wrote:

pHz wrote: for free (and IMHO) ... ... youve ALREADY found the best free limiter by far ... slainte rob Thanks, pHz. Do you consider it a waste to buy a commerical hard limiter then?

personally ... yes ...

... in my limiter folder are the kjaerhus classic limiter and the vb-audio d-limiter (both free) although i do use tls maximiser and a few commercial plugs i own also include limiters (ie - PSP vintagewarmer)

slainte rob

Buzzroom Buzmaxi v2 is great too.
e-phonic xpressor has great functions, but less than Tbt MAximizer (but for Tbt Mximizer its many options seems to cause latency, avoiding sometimes to use it live...)

Probably the only other freebie I'd consider is Dominion (also by Sascha at Digitalfishphones). It most likely has the same limiter that he used with Endorphin, but due to it's different impementation with the envelope shaping facilities, it's a great tool to use on drum tracks and groups. But if you set the envelopes to no effect, then you get a Sashca limiter with enhancement and saturation, that can also work nicely as a master FX.

With that and Endorphin and TLS, I've never bothered buying one. I've got a couple of h/w comps that'll limit, so I see no point in shelling out for a commercial VST limiter. In fact, even if I didn't have my h/w ones, I think I'd be happy with those 3 VST limiters anyway.

I also highly recommend BuzMaxi and NonLinear

http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/1249.html

http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/651.html

pHz wrote:

the vb-audio d-limiter slainte rob

hardly state of the art

http://www.chinaski.org/gvst/

Good stuff.

I'd have to recommend the Buzzroom stuff all round, been experimenting with it the last few days and still can't believe this stuff is freeware ...