God, now I have several more to try, too!
It's a nightmare, cos they're all damn good!

I agree with 4damind about Pro-L being very transparent.
There are plenty of plug-ins available to add colour if that is what is required.
Pro-L just does what it's meant to do

Yes, I think you're right. I just recorded a heavily-strummed, bassy Martin D28, did nothing else to it but put one of the Acoustic settings on Pro-L and a bit of gain, and it sounds great.
Very close to what went in the mic in the first place.
I tried the same with Xenon, and ProTools froze.
I tried again with Elephant, but that intermittent buzz makes it impossible to properly give it a chance.

Pro-l user here. I like the fact that it has four modes to match whatever your working on. It also seems to get a couple db louder before breaking up compared to the others and I find it the easiest to tweak to get what I'm looking for.

Elephant is probably equally good but you have to work on it to give that sound.

Xenon is nice but tends to break up or color faster than either the pro-l or elephant.

Barricade I have not tried.

The pro-l was much more transparent and louder than the precision limiter by UAD that I was using prior.

Thanks to all of you. And from that last post, I have never heard UAD but understood they're pretty damn good.
I've done a vocal tonight on this version of Back In The USSR, and played it really loud on the living-room hifi. I was blown away by how clear the voice sounds, without any colouration as far as I could hear.
I also added Pro-L to most of the other instruments on this, although they had previously had a fair bit of stuff done with PSP, etc.
I'm doing the whole White Album (I like a challenge and a big project . . .), and judging by this I probably will go for the Pro-L.
It is great that I have almost a whole month, though, to keep trying it on all sorts of stuff. Can't believe the volume I am getting with this, without it sounding like some weird stuff has been mysteriously added to it through the process.
The only other things on the voice are a tiny bit of OldTimer, and PianoVerb.
Yes, it would sound nice and clear because it is a very sparse (OK, bizarre!) arrangement - but you can still hear how transparent the Pro-L is.
I can't wait to let rip on Dear Prudence . . . it's my neighbours I pity, really.
If I notice it isn't so good on a rock blaster, I'll be back to moan about it.


http://soundcloud.com/vicshere/back-in-the-ussr
Last edited by vicshere on Mon Feb 11, 2013 3:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

Note though that this is only on one single test track which does not reveal one critical flaw with AOM Limiter.

It can't handle clean, loud 808 type kick drums.. or any sub stuff in a clean mix (meaning a mix not containing any severely or moderately distorted elements like electric guitars etc). In this kind of troublesome mix you can get into trouble real quickly (same problem with Slate's FG-X where you have to pull down the ITP slider all the way).

Actually, ALL limiters suffer with this kind of material but most have a "hold"/look-a-head function which can keep the distortion to a minimum or completely eliminate it.. at the cost of transient impact though. Due to the very few controls on the AOM Limiter once you run into this kind of material you are out of luck. Then again you can use another limiter, perhaps some of the excellent free ones (like LoudMax or TbT TL Maximizer or TbT Pocket Limiter).

Other than that, AOM invisible limiter is very impressive! Best of all, the developer is responsive and has already promised to look into this one flaw it has. If/when he implements an additional hold function or longer release then it'll be a very nice plugin indeed.

Cheers!
bManic
Last edited by bmanic on Mon Feb 11, 2013 3:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

I've used Pro L on a lot of my tracks, and I think it's a fine limiter.

Although, I find myself using the Brainworx (bx_XL V2) Mastering Limiter these days. But you can't really go wrong with any of the Fab Filter stuff.

So is there anything that Pro-L is particularly known for NOT handling well?
I just ask as I do a bit of everything, and need something reliable for all sorts.

It can't sound "analogue" or add any "mojo" to your tracks. It's completely digital by design, through and through.

The very philosophy of Pro-L was to make it as transparent as possible. I did hundreds, if not thousands of ABX tests at equal volume and various levels of gain reduction to make sure I wasn't just fooled by mr placebo.

It's just very finely tuned highly "intelligent" program dependent dynamics (that was also a requirement as FabFilter wanted to make it a one-slider-limiter that works right out of the box without too much tweaking).

It's also worth noting that the 4 different algorithms in Pro-L are not just "variations of internal parameters/constants", they are 4 completely different algorithms, each having their own internal workings and made from scratch.

Having said that, they still have a "sound" of or "behavior" of their own. You can't make Pro-L sound like another limiter. It has it's own vibe. Sometimes that vibe simply doesn't suit a track no matter how much you tweak it.

Oh, and I'm not that fond of the way the oversampling is implemented or sounds. I'm not entirely sure if I'm a victim of mr placebo again but I just feel it's a bit "strained" somehow.. like the sound of a track changes a tiny bit as soon as you engage oversampling. Probably has something to do with it being linear phase based (the filters in the oversampling that is). Same thing happens for me in Voxengo Elephant. I always set it to minimum-phase.. and all other plugins that allow to switch the type of oversampling.

Cheers!
bManic

Great advice, thank you! I just about grasped it, and I'll look at that while I trial it. But I must admit you guys have pretty much made my mind up, unless something disastrous happens while I'm throwing everything at it.
I like the idea of messing things as much as I want with PSP, etc, but having a limiter at the end which just does the job transparently.

This.. if you want what you put in to come out but just louder/finalized , it's pro-L all the way, especially for PT users, having an AAX version and all.

I think you already answered yourself

You can do all the colour during the mixing stage, no need for that at mastering

Pro-L is the best. It's that simple, in my books.

Compassion Big Limit mod is what I use it's as good as FG-X but doesn't crash the DAW. When I demoed Pro-L it was perfect and a great GUI very stable does exactly what it says on the tin, no clip, louder, trqansparent and easy but with Compassion you kill all the birds with one GAU-8.

all these limiters are good tbh and I dont think at home its the best idea to try to knock off more than 3-6db...Overall I preferred Pro-L but its quite expensive. However Pro L was also the first limiter I felt I would like to use for other more creative stuff and more generalised usage...
AOM Limiter and Barricade are good value. Im not so crazy about Elephant as some others are but maybe I dont know how to get the best out of it...

wow, thank you very much for this!