Voxengo Elephant 4.0 mastering limiter plugin released

[_leras]

.. but luckily we don't have to worry about that any more. The loudness war is going to die soon due to the aggressive legislation that is happening all over the world. Flat, clipped tracks will sound much less loud than tracks that retain their dynamics so this will most likely reverse the trend soon (well, perhaps within the next 5 years or so).

Cheers!
bManic

Only if Beatport (and other stores) implement the new 'standard' loudness relative playback systems.... clubs and dj mixers etc won't ...


Elephant 4 sounds great... might finally be time to pick an alternative to the UAD limiter...
.

[Eleventh]

Wow.. this thing just mops up the floor with both Barricade and Limiter6. I can push it like crazy and it still manages to sound good. I wonder if Voxengo does student discounts.. Nice preset btw, bmanic.

Oh, and that EVAL button. Finally gain compensation done correctly!

[Phase47]

I wonder if Alexey would consider making a feature reduced version of Elephant? Something that would primarily be aimed for track limiting.

It should have a ceiling control that could go all the way down to -30 and another control for makeup gain and that's it. Any chance to make it happen?

Agreed. A simplified "Little Elephant" that functions like the L2 would be a pretty neat tool, particularly now that it's got the EL-4 algorithm. A lot of major producers and engineers are using the L2 as a channel limiter now, not just on the master buss, and I could see the same thing happening with the "Little Elephant".

I agree, the Klanghelm Compressor in limiter-mode does that very well, for example. Would love to see a "tiny elephant" - great idea!

[Uncle E]

Elephant 4 sounds great... might finally be time to pick an alternative to the UAD limiter...

They're pretty different. For increasing loudness, the UAD Precision Limiter is much less effective than most notable limiters. It does have a very nice sound of its own, though, and makes sense to use when you want that sound.

[_leras]

Elephant 4 sounds great... might finally be time to pick an alternative to the UAD limiter...

They're pretty different. For increasing loudness, the UAD Precision Limiter is much less effective than most notable limiters. It does have a very nice sound of its own, though, and makes sense to use when you want that sound.

Yeah the UAD Limiter is almost too brittle... I only ever really use it to take a few db off the final mix. Nice for real instruments, not as good for electronic. Many people have said Elephant is the best for Electronic...

[Uncle E]

Nice for real instruments, not as good for electronic.

Agreed.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Thanks for the suggestion about reduced Elephant. I however, do not think it's a great idea, because making a single fixed algorithm setting like L2 will reduces uses of the limiter. Moreover, I can't tell which single setting would suit a majority of users.

[Beatworld]

Thanks for the suggestion about reduced Elephant.

It shall be known as the Baby Elephant

[Aleksey Vaneev]

bmanic, the distortion "footprint" of a limiter can be measured quite objectively. For this you have to select some songs with differing spectral content. Then select the gain increase to apply which is strong enough.

Then you may obtain the "control signal" for each of these songs by putting a e.g. -12 dBFS constant signal into one of the channels (channel linking should be 100%). This constant signal will be multiplied by limiter's control signal. You have to high-pass it then below 10Hz to remove low-frequency oscillation which is not very descriptive.

The next step is to compare this high-passed control signal to that of another limiter and another songs. You can measure RMS or do spectral analysis over this signal.

This is quite objective. Moreover, spectral analysis reveals "modes" (spectral spikes) in this control signal which add the most coloration. Now I usually try to minimize the appearance of modes so that the control signal looks more like a brown/pink noise.

Engineering secrets )

[bmanic]

All of this is known and rather straight forward (and I used pretty much identical techniques to study other limiters, compressors and some hardware) but as you might well know, seeing the control signal plus the "sonic finger print" and understanding how or why it is created are two completely different things. Understanding one does not lead to the other.

Anyhow, this thread is for Elephant. Lets get back on topic!

Cheers!
bManic

[Liero]

Elephant is awesome, I've been on board since the version 1 days.

IMO it's also the best named Voxengo plugin

[Eleventh]

Any opinions of Pro-L vs Elephant? I've been ABing then for a while now and having a hard time deciding. I noticed that Pro-L is louder at the same input gain setting as Elephant, but also produces more distortion. When comparing RMS-normalized clips I think that Pro-L tends to sound punchier, but also a bit more distorted.

I'm using bmaniac's preset on Elephant and also bmaniac's preset "Hard Rock - Fast Release" on Pro-L.

[Sampleconstruct]

Any opinions of Pro-L vs Elephant? I've been ABing then for a while now and having a hard time deciding. I noticed that Pro-L is louder at the same input gain setting as Elephant, but also produces more distortion. When comparing RMS-normalized clips I think that Pro-L tends to sound punchier, but also a bit more distorted.

I'm using bmaniac's preset on Elephant and also bmaniac's preset "Hard Rock - Fast Release" on Pro-L.

Have you read the thread yet? It's full of Pro-L vs Elephant comments.

[Eleventh]

I did yesterday but I guess I was half asleep I'll give it another go

Edit: Ok, some interesting stuff in there, but nothing decisive. I'll just keep ABing..

[wesleyt]

Pro-L and Elephant are the only two limiters I use regularly. Elephant v.3 was my go-to, and I am now getting familiar with v.4. I use Pro-L when it sounds better to me, most notably when I do rock mastering for my friend.

I find Pro-L easier to dial in, and I am still discovering the depths of Elephant, even though I've had it much longer.