Maxwell Smart v3 - what a nice surprise!

[LivelyAudio]

32-bit? Hello? It's almost 2018...

No idea why so few devs use this BTW: https://github.com/olilarkin/wdl-ol You won't have to bother with 32-bit only frameworks, which only put out Windows VST's anymore that way. Unless i miss something. I'm no programmer.

Well, the transition between visual programming and text-based programming can be a bit intimidating for people like me, who have absolutely no experience with the latter. Nevertheless I'm determined to make 64 bit happen, just don't know how and when exactly.

[LivelyAudio]

About which limiter is better, I'm a bit biased to make any comment, but here's what I've found when testing numerous free and commercial limiters, and developing my own. The limiters can be put in 2 categories:

1) the ones that aim for clean frequency response (minimum amount of harmonics produced), and
2) the ones that don't hesitate to saturate the sound in order to gain more loudness, and make the transients really stand out.

Limiters in category 1 tend to make the transients sound slightly dampened, which is the side effect of making sure harmonics are not produced. There just is a point after which no loudness can be obtained without saturation. That's where category 2 comes in. If loudness is what you're after, and it fits the material you're working with, saturating the sound might be your way to go. Whether or not this is the job of a limiter, can be argued, but e.g. soft clipping is a way of limiting the signal, so technically it's one way to perform the task.

The thing is, category 2 doesn't necessarily preserve transients at their cleanest, but the ratio between transients and the rest of the sound may be preserved better than in category 1. So at the same time transients are pushed to lower levels, they get saturated in order to compensate the lost loudness (so when there's less peak loudness, there's now more average loudness). This could create a feeling of clearer transients, which might just be what you're looking for. Setting the threshold level / input gain right is crucial with limiters in this category.

The discussion has given me some ideas for the future, so thanks for that! Not that I'm going to turn Maxwell (Smart) into a soft clipper, but maybe I'll include an option for some sophisticated way to compensate lost loudness in specific parts of the sound without destroying everything else on the way.

[Lesha]

32-bit? Hello? It's almost 2018...

And, it was made in 2012.

[do_androids_dream]

The best "free" limiter is probably the demo version of TDR Limiter 6 GE (analog style: no automatic recalls / saving function).

Still doesn't do transparent loud like AOM does. I personally couldn't here much improvement over vladg's original.

I see, you would rather distort, that is what you call transparent.

TDR Limiter 6 distorts way before AOM does. AOM Invisible was universally very well received across gearslutz and pretty much everywhere else. It goes louder, cleaner than anything else out there. If you want loud of course.

In a way the argument is moot for me because 4 times out of 5 I have a soft clipper as the final plugin on my masters. I generally don't like what limiters do to a signal - soft clippers are far more natural. Clipping off the very start of a transient is something the brain does not notice at all (unless you've gone too far into distortion).

And, if a client is insisting upon mega loud, I would much rather trade off a little distortion (that no listener is ever going to notice) against what a limiter does at high levels of gain reduction which sounds infinitely worse to me.

Remember that a transparent limiter is simply trying to make your signal sound exactly the same except with your peaks lower - that's it. By this criteria a soft clipper is better suited. The difference is that a soft clipper relies very much on an experienced set of ears (and very good monitors/a great monitoring environment/headphones) to hear when you're going too far - a lot of limiters have fail-safe ways to prevent the user introducing unpleasant distortion - but you won't get as loud or get the signal preservation (transient/stereo image etc.) of a clipper.

[Tp3]

32-bit? Hello? It's almost 2018...

And, it was made in 2012.

1208Audio EQ's are 64bit SynthEdit ...

Would this plugin be converted to 64bit at the foreseeable (ie. near) future ?

[Halonmusic]

32-bit? Hello? It's almost 2018...

And, it was made in 2012.

1208Audio EQ's are 64bit SynthEdit ...

Would this plugin be converted to 64bit at the foreseeable (ie. near) future ?

There is a 64bit Beta version of Flowstone. Have been for sone time i believe, so yeah its possible.

[Aloysius]

32-bit? Hello? It's almost 2018...

Another Thread and ye olde squeaky wheel screams 64-bit yet again. Did a special someone in your life buy you a new computer for Christmas or something? In case you missed it, these ''ancient'' plug-ins can still be bridged with jbridge. Even in 2018.

[heavymetalmixer]

Does JBridge report latency to the DAW? I've seen people say it doesn't.

[heavymetalmixer]

Still no 64 bits version coming?

[Googly Smythe]

Still no 64 bits version coming?

Written in Flowstone. Probably not possible. If the dev is still active, of course.

[Halonmusic]

There is a 64bit beta version of flowstone available so its possible

[Raprodent]

Hey! How's it going?
Anyone has the v0.9 BETA of LivelyAudio Maxwell SmartMax ?

[bitman]

I wanna use a limiter named Maxwell Smart.