good mixing limiter?

[jbarish]

You really shouldn't be mixing with a limiter on the master at all.
You should get your mix as good as you can around -5 to -10 db and then add a limiter to the master bus
dial in your limiter settings and then make any mix adjustments and then your golden.

[Vortifex]

..

[sqigls]

You really shouldn't be mixing with a limiter on the master at all.
You should get your mix as good as you can around -5 to -10 db and then add a limiter to the master bus
dial in your limiter settings and then make any mix adjustments and then your golden.

turn off your tv

mix with a limiter on, mix into the limiter, do whatever you friggon want.
some artists always have a limiter on, it's a part of their sound.
i get where you're coming from, but you don't have to believe everything you read in Computer Music magazine.

Rules, rules... damn, if i left 10dB headroom i would consider myself a very lazy engineer.

[plexuss]

You really shouldn't be mixing with a limiter on the master at all.
You should get your mix as good as you can around -5 to -10 db and then add a limiter to the master bus
dial in your limiter settings and then make any mix adjustments and then your golden.

turn off your tv

mix with a limiter on, mix into the limiter, do whatever you friggon want.
some artists always have a limiter on, it's a part of their sound.
i get where you're coming from, but you don't have to believe everything you read in Computer Music magazine.

Rules, rules... damn, if i left 10dB headroom i would consider myself a very lazy engineer.

I track, mix and master all simultaeously. This includes a mastering limiter on the master buss. This way I can do it all at the same time and better tailor and integrate the sound. Then, I render a mix without the master buss. I duplicate the project and delete everything but the master buss and import the mix. I use the master buss I created while mixing as a first step in a now focussed mastering stage. recently I've rendering out the mix as wet stems, importing into Harrison Mixbuss and doing a second stage mix there, recreating the master buss from the original mix in Mixbuss 32C and also doing the final mastering from there. I know no rules.

[jbarish]

You really shouldn't be mixing with a limiter on the master at all.
You should get your mix as good as you can around -5 to -10 db and then add a limiter to the master bus
dial in your limiter settings and then make any mix adjustments and then your golden.

turn off your tv

mix with a limiter on, mix into the limiter, do whatever you friggon want.
some artists always have a limiter on, it's a part of their sound.
i get where you're coming from, but you don't have to believe everything you read in Computer Music magazine.

Rules, rules... damn, if i left 10dB headroom i would consider myself a very lazy engineer.

Some rules have practical applications. If you're mixing into a limiter at higher than 0 db you're doing your music and/or clients a disservice. Fundamentals are exactly that. I believe there any number of articles in Computer Music Magazine that could help educate you about them.

[Shuffle34]

Waves L3

Too late, this deal is done.

[MogwaiBoy]

I agree that mixing into limiters is generally bad practice - not something I do - but to each their own...

I thought mixing into a master bus compressor was equally damaging but I've proven myself wrong on that a few times.

[sqigls]

You really shouldn't be mixing with a limiter on the master at all.
You should get your mix as good as you can around -5 to -10 db and then add a limiter to the master bus
dial in your limiter settings and then make any mix adjustments and then your golden.

turn off your tv

mix with a limiter on, mix into the limiter, do whatever you friggon want.
some artists always have a limiter on, it's a part of their sound.
i get where you're coming from, but you don't have to believe everything you read in Computer Music magazine.

Rules, rules... damn, if i left 10dB headroom i would consider myself a very lazy engineer.

Some rules have practical applications. If you're mixing into a limiter at higher than 0 db you're doing your music and/or clients a disservice. Fundamentals are exactly that. I believe there any number of articles in Computer Music Magazine that could help educate you about them.

but one would have to be an absolute tard though wouldn't one?
doing people injustice all over the show.

Computer music is rad yes, i used to read it a lot maybe 15 years ago. but I've also been practically applying audio production techniques into my life for over 25 years now, so I've learned a thing or two myself, especially about taking advice with a grain of salt and knowing when to trust my own ears.

the reason why i initially posted is that I know several electronic artists who have their own mastering chains, that remain there, studio or live. The mastering chain is a part of their sound, and they mix into it. And they sound ferkin smashing! Another artist i can think of however, Pitch Black, dub/dance/electronic artist from New Zealand - they never used to use dynamics on the master bus because they can control their shit like pros, and they prefer an open dynamic sound.

whatever floats your boat

[wagtunes]

Okay, I'll bite because I'm an idiot. Why don't you mix with a limiter on the master buss? I do it all the time. In fact, I load up my master buss with my console, tape emulator, limiter and everything else I've already decided I'm going to use because I already know what kind of sound I'm going for BEFORE I even throw one instrument on a track. This way, The sound I'm getting from the start is the sound I'm going to finish with.

Do I make adjustments along the way? Sure. Sometimes I'll even make major changes and chuck one tape emulation for another one. But for me, mixing everything dry and THEN throwing all that stuff on, I usually end up having to make more changes to the individual tracks than I would have. Because all that mastering stuff seriously changes your sound depending on what you're throwing on it.

Plus, after a while, you know ahead of time, based on the instruments you're using, what it's all going to sound like anyway.

So like I said, I'm an idiot. So why don't you mix into a limiter?

[plexuss]

Okay, I'll bite because I'm an idiot. Why don't you mix with a limiter on the master buss? I do it all the time. In fact, I load up my master buss with my console, tape emulator, limiter and everything else I've already decided I'm going to use because I already know what kind of sound I'm going for BEFORE I even throw one instrument on a track. This way, The sound I'm getting from the start is the sound I'm going to finish with.

Do I make adjustments along the way? Sure. Sometimes I'll even make major changes and chuck one tape emulation for another one. But for me, mixing everything dry and THEN throwing all that stuff on, I usually end up having to make more changes to the individual tracks than I would have. Because all that mastering stuff seriously changes your sound depending on what you're throwing on it.

Plus, after a while, you know ahead of time, based on the instruments you're using, what it's all going to sound like anyway.

So like I said, I'm an idiot. So why don't you mix into a limiter?

It's a workflow thing. The "typical" workflow is to mix but not master. This gets all weird and in the grey areas and opinions start to catch fire. But... taking a risk here to explain... mastering is the process of working on the final mix render. the idea is to tweek the audio within its own context but also in the context of other tracks in the same release. Back in the day mastering would be done by a separate expert because there was also the final medium to consdier in the master, namely vinyl, which needed it's own considerations that are outside of playing the master tape back.

So mastering became this process after the mix of bringing out the quality as much as possible, creating come synergy with the other tracks in the release, and getting them ready for teh vinyl process.

The typical workflow is based on this, so the usual approach was, in mixing, to only put on the mix buss stuff that generally gets the mix where you want it without getting into the crazy details of mastering.

Same approach for digital except the final media is in this case digital. in digital you want to keep the audio from clipping over 0dBFS. This is the job of the digital limiter. And so, if you mix and put a digital limiter on the mix buss and bring the levels up to 0dBFS on the output, you are leaving no headroom for the mastering process. Since mastering is the final process that take into account the delivery media, it too will typically have a digital brickwall limiter on the output as the final process to ensure the levels don't clip.

But, you, like me, do not send our stuff out for mastering. So we put the limiter on the mix buss and call it a day. I actually do both mixing and mastering in separate stages but as I mentioned I master a bit while I mix. but then I create a mix render with the limiter off and then bring that into a mastering project. I mix with a limiter on just so I can get the max levels and get a better sense of what it will sound like when I do the final mastering.

[MogwaiBoy]

Because something could be peaking badly and unless you're mindful of that you may never know. Snares and other sharper transients are more suseptible to this. You can end up unnecessarily EQ'ing or processing instead of just simply turning that element down so it's not peaking. Why it could be bad is accumulative degeneration of quality via limiting (loss of punch etc).

The fader is your friend!

[jbarish]

Mixing with a limiter on the MB can lead to all sorts of bad habits. Can you be successful using bad habits?? Yes, looking at Lonzo Ball's release on jump shots can tell you that. But why make it harder on yourself because you don't follow fundamentals. Gain staging is a very important discipline and mixing without a limiter on the MB makes you work a little harder. If you can get your mix sounding sweet without the limiter on the MB it's really going to shine once you tweak limiter settings properly. I prefer not to render to stereo before mastering because limiting can because certain elements to shift slightly and having the tracks live while mastering allows you to compensate for these shifts. But horses for courses, I'm apparently an absolute tard.

[sqigls]

i wasn't directing that at you, i'm just saying, part of being an audio engineer is being vigilant, and in the day and age of digital (quite some many years now) the thing to NEVER do is go over 0. I'm saying, a person would have to be a pretty shit engineer to being doing this, it's a given. Not calling you anything.

but having worked with mastering engineers and mastered some EPs myself, i like to be able to 'compensate for the shifts'. It's not like you monitor the whole time with the limiter smashing holes in your mix, but even then HEY, maybe the mix sounds good with some holes smashed in it.

This is what i'm alluding to, these 'rules' we might read in a magazine or hear from an engineer in passing, yeah sometimes it's valuable information, i'll store that in my memory banks, but sometimes it's the symptom of some superseded process or technology, OR it's information dosed out to tards so they don't send clipping masters with holes smashed in them to the mastering engineer. As long as it sounds good though, one person's bad habits might be another person's method of operation...?

I generally mix with at least Nugen ISL2 on the master because of occasional DC noise bursts (from plugins that shall go nameless) and the fact I'm generally beta testing SOMETHING at any given point in time.
But I rarely push any level into the limiter. It's just a safety precaution. And if i need to i'll simply switch it off for a few minutes and make sure the mix isn't trickling over.

Back on point, what about that D16 limiter, is that still free? i know it's not so clean, but it's still pretty useful.

[Apratim]

Why not first make with a limiter on on the master at 0db celling
Then lower the the level of each track equally say 10db.. some random hedroom will be created in the master say -6db
Later use LP multiband limiting

[jbarish]

I believe there's still a free version of Limiter 6 which would be hard to beat at that price.