I think Justin3am has brought it up in his post, i still have not got round to demoing the Sonalksis MS even though i am a big fan of their plug-ins thanks for the reminder fridtjof mate

Dean

Too bad the Sonalksis stuff is so expensive. Prefer it over the waves stuff at work. Those plugs just don't inspire me.

EDIT: Damn FLUX is even more pricey! Beautiful interfaces though.

Among the free ones, I prefer BuzMaxi 3 over TLs Maximizer. It sounds more transparent to my ears. I wonder why it doesn't get more mentions.

Yup, Buzmaxxi 3 was my top Limiter before i got Elephant 3 and Precission Limiter (UAD).

VERY clean!
Last edited by adl on Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:27 am; edited 1 time in total

Not sure about "the best", as for mastering i like to rely on someone else , and a qualified mastering engineer, and as i don' often push much too far the limiters for shaping sound, but let's give some input on what i sometimes use on the master bus (or another bus) :

- I like the way JB Barricade Pro can shape the sound (using enveloppe, rms, m/s...). Not the best for loudness war, but very capable and cheap (and with some genuine features).

- I still have the demo of Elephant 3, and re-tried it some days ago : i am very impressed how good it can deal with deep basses without distortion.

- Aradaz Maximizer 513 has some serious punch (and is free), but it will really depend on the kind of music you feed in : perfect for heavy loud drums, not so good for 60hz sine sub-basses, as some distortoin occurs at the end of the enveloppe...

FYI, I think i will try the Blue Cat Protector soon, i have never tried the expensive ones i can't afford (Sonnox, Sonlaksis), since the free/cheap ones do the trick well enough for my needs (and since some compressors also have built-in limiters which can fit well in several situations).
With the 3 mentioned above, i have enough for clean boosting, punch shaping or simple peak limiting.
One of these days, i may end up buying Elephant3.

Once I figured out how the "link to ceiling" function is supposed to be used, it has become a very useful tool. It responds differently to hot input than other limiters... not a bad thing just different. Once I got the hang of the clip and smooth knobs, I've found that they are where a lot of the character comes from (much like the "knee" parameter on the PSP Vintage Warmer). Dial back the clipping and increase smoothing and the limiter is pretty transparent. Less smoothing and more clipping and it's response gets more aggressive.

@fridtjof: The Flux and Sonalksis plug-ins are pricey but they are some of the few that I can justify spending that kind of money on. They have a sound to them that hasn't been overused yet (unlike Waves L2/L3 and many TDM processors) which is worth the price alone in my book.

If these are out of your price range definitely check out Elephant and that Kjaerhus MPL-1 (not better or worse, just different). I did a test of a bunch of these not long ago. I can't seem to find the thread now.

Depends on how hard you push it. If you need "current pop-record loudness" then the Sonalksis limiter is actually much less transparent than several of it's competitors. I liked it more as a pure limiter for the drum bus or other sub groups.

If you feed it with dance/hiphop/reggae or anything in general with a lot of bass then it breaks down pretty fast. The way it sounds when it's limiting is very cool but it's far from being transparent. If you do a search about it here on KvR you'll find some more extensive comments and some audio examples of it's problems. At moderate levels (-1 to -2dB of gain reduction) it can cope quite well.

Voxengo Elephant v3 is still king if you need loudness and precise control over how the transients are limited. iZotope Ozone v4 should be pretty damn impressive as well once it is released.

Cheers!
bManic

I hope iZotope leave out the crap reverb module that is in previous versions. Everything else is useful in Ozone bar that damned reverb lol

I believe alchemist (flux) is pretty much out of just about all of our budgets??

I'd love to try it, but just too afraid I'd like......then it's like......where will the cash come from???

I mainly do quite ambient stuff so I havent really tested it on drum loudness, but it was very good at slightly loudening the audio without distortion. Still havent tried Elephant though. I dont like the Voxengo's interface or how the knobs handle.

I have it. ...and it's awesome! Especially for fixing stuff that I didn't record (or stuff that I mic'ed poorly, not that that ever happens).

Nope, the verb is still there. It's been improved a bit but I still turn it off.

I hate you !

So, is it THAT much better for the final deal? Or am I going to be pretty happy with ozone and should just not consider it at all?

Is it useful for tracks as well as mastering, or does it have the latency/cpu problems of most other mastering solutions?

Well, it's only a problem if mastering tools are used for mixing, really. There are so many tracking compressor/limiter plugs that it doesn't seem necessary to try and use mastering tools for this purpose. I mean, the built in latency is what makes the mastering plugs work for their intended purpose.

And you can quote me.

That's a tough call... What works for me is often guaranteed not to work for anyone else.

What makes Alchemist golden (for everything... individual tracks, mixing, mastering) is the surgical control over envelope shape and how/when each component of the processors works with each other. It's basically a multi-band version Solera with some of the most beautiful visual feedback I've seen (comparable to Ozone or APEQ. So, for each frequency band you have a compressor, expander, dcompressor and dexpander each have an upper and lower threshold as well as normal compressor/expander controls. The envelope controls are per band and if I remember right (I'm not at production computer) there is a pre-emphasis eq per band as well.

I've never been able to get results I was happy with out of Ozone, so I can't comment on that one. I think that's a personal problem though because I have a coworker that can work miracles with it. I still use CQ1 and ML4000 4 though, it just depends on what the situation calls for.
Last edited by justin3am on Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:20 pm; edited 1 time in total