Kjaerhus MPL-1 Master Limiter is NOW AVAILABLE!

[AndrewSimon]

Yepp it's here

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/mpl-1.php

Downloading now..... comments later....

[Torben]

Congratulations Torben! MPL-1 is by far the best limiter i've heard and tested, this baby is really transparent!

WELL DONE!

I placed my order this morning.

Thank you very much (note this post came from another thread).

Torben

[Torben]

PS: I'm still simply blown away by MPL-1 's Quality!

Whoever thinks i am exaggerating: Try it for yourself and compare to other limiters on the market, for example the highly worshipped Waves L3 ($600). MPL-1 is beyond that - simply hear for yourself not by using sinewaves and noise, try it on your own music composition, and NOT on already mixed music (doh!). Simply Unbelievable.

Good suggestion. Naturally, never test a limiter on already limited music. (This was the last post from the closed thread.)

Torben

[Kingston]

It's out! Great news.


The initial impression is *very* good. Like any mastering limiter, it's transparent up to a point, then the release starts kick in like on any other compressor/limiter. I'm glad Torben left lots of range on the parameters. Right now I'm abusing the program dependent release action, and I'm getting an impression of a "big" sound that I have not heard on any other limiter. On this particular song, the release shape is just right (and it's really flexible!). In an odd but good way, this limiter sounds like it's doing more relaxed compression at times (at lesser ratios). Almost as if there is a subtle low-level compressor underneath. I guess this is just the psychoacoustic impression from the flexible release shapes on my particular test songs.

And just that it leaves no doubt, it *can* be seriously transparent indeed! I just personally always go for a little color, and I'm glad it's possible with MPL as well.


Back to testing. Be back later with more opinionated annoyance.

and just to verify the original controversial test audio file. I fed the MPL some extremely bass and high-end critical material. I can already verify the fact it indeed does not distort in the way I'm used to. On this that particular piece I had lots of 50hz or so information and a few other respectable limiters were struggling to tame it.

[orangesuite]

just a quick question, i've looked breifly for the specs on AES17 as regarding the RMS output, referencing the k-system is the readout on the plug k-12?

[fgimian]

My thoughts are that this limiter is extremely impressive and offers top end quality amongst the best of them.

The GUI is absolutely gorgeous, the sound is very adjustable and smooth.

I personally think that it's only possible competition would be Voxengo's Elephant which I like just as much. The two things that I slightly prefer on the Kjaerhus limiter are the GUI and the very well controlled behaviour i.e. I never ever get the signal over 0 db which doesnt happen sometimes with Voxengo Elephant.

I'm currently considering whether or not to spend the extract cash to buy this baby.

The little negative points ... Opening this in Wavelab, I get A LOT of popups, two when opening, one when closing, I thought that was kinda frustrating. Also the fact that I had to provide my email and name to download this was kinda annoying. No big deal, but just thought I'd mention it.

Nice work Torben

Cheers
Fots

[bullshark]

Speaking of K meter, am I the only one who would like to see a selectable range K meter on a mastering limiter? The way it is now, I have to insert a K meter after the limiter and go from one GUI to the next, seeing a mastering limiter is the last audio processing unit in a signal chain (on my typical setup anyway), wouldn't it make sense?

I haven't tried the MPL as of yet, I'm just going trough the manual and was a bit disapointed not to see this feature.

[Torben]

Kingston, Thank you for the real-life test

orangesuite, It is K-0 The only difference is that the K-12 scale is ofset 12 dB, so the -12dB reads 0 and 0 reads +12dB.

soundpalace, At first I did not understand why you said two popups, but you are right because both Standard and Pro Edition gives you the same demo message (we did not considder that).

bullshark, We desided to make a metering plugin with different meters to help you during mastering.

Thanks
Torben

[headquest]

Hey! Congratulations again Torben! A fantastic effect!

Just been demoing this alongside Elephant (as I will be buying one or the other). I've been using them alternately on the master track in Sonar 5 Producer, including using the bus waveform preview feature that draws in the waveform as the music plays. A useful feature in Sonar at any time, but interesting here because having drawn in the Elephant Waveform I can then replay the track with MPL-1 and see how different the resulting waveform looks.

No substitute for listening of course and to my ears MPL-1 sounds fantastic. One important point to me though (as I am no moastering expert!) is that Elephant comes with a range of different settings to suit different material/tastes. I think that overall MPL-1 is undoubtedly more transparent than Elephant... but on some of the material I tried it on, certain of Elephant's setting suited the music better because of the character added. So I think that I will basically need more expertise using MPL-1 in order to make a fair comparisson.

Two questions:

1) Would it be possible for MPL-1 to come with some similar helpful presets like Elephant, to help duffers like me?

2) I am always interested to know why professional limiters come with a dithering option, and what benefits there would be to using this instead of the Powr 3 dithering algorithm that is built into my host?

Also one other minor suggestion - I think it might be helpful to have the option to double click on the parameter readout and type in specific values as an alternative to twiddling the knobs.

[IIRs]

orangesuite, It is K-0 The only difference is that the K-12 scale is ofset 12 dB, so the -12dB reads 0 and 0 reads +12dB.

Doesn't that sort of miss the point a bit..?

[orangesuite]

Torben, thanks for the reply. Like bullshark, I also stick a meter (inspector XL) at the end of the mastering chain. The reason I was asking is that I get disctinctly different RMS readings from MPL-1 than I do from Inspector. On closer inspection ive noticed that the RMS reading on MPL-1 does not change according to the levels as quickly as InspectorXL. Is there anyway to change the window of the RMS reading or is this time-window chosen specifically for a reason. Not doubting the quality of the plug-in, I am very impressed with it, It just becomes confusing when you have several high-quality plugins that vary in their readouts. And before the usual retorts of use your ears to judge loudness comes in, this question is more academic!

[Torben]

Hey! Congratulations again Torben! A fantastic effect!

Thank you

Two questions:

1) Would it be possible for MPL-1 to come with some similar helpful presets like Elephant, to help duffers like me?

2) I am always interested to know why professional limiters come with a dithering option, and what benefits there would be to using this instead of the Powr 3 dithering algorithm that is built into my host?

1. We will make some presets later.

2. I think most people expect some kind of dithering in a mastering limiter. The dithering we use is considered the safe choice, and you can process the audio afterwards without getting unpleasant surprises. But if you know this is going to a CDA I would use the POWR3 dithering, as it psycho acoustically sound more quiet (though it's not).

Also one other minor suggestion - I think it might be helpful to have the option to double click on the parameter readout and type in specific values as an alternative to twiddling the knobs.

We will probably implement that later.

Torben, thanks for the reply. Like bullshark, I also stick a meter (inspector XL) at the end of the mastering chain. The reason I was asking is that I get disctinctly different RMS readings from MPL-1 than I do from Inspector. On closer inspection ive noticed that the RMS reading on MPL-1 does not change according to the levels as quickly as InspectorXL. Is there anyway to change the window of the RMS reading or is this time-window chosen specifically for a reason. Not doubting the quality of the plug-in, I am very impressed with it, It just becomes confusing when you have several high-quality plugins that vary in their readouts. And before the usual retorts of use your ears to judge loudness comes in, this question is more academic!

This is one other reason why we want to make a metering plugin. People want to be able to set time factors and maybe weight them after some psycho acoustic curve etc. The MPL-1 uses 300ms integration time which is considered very normal (also how fast needled meters work). If you want to be able to use different plugins it is important you got a separate metering plugin you trust and can use every time.

Torben

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[orangesuite]

torben after placing the PSP Vintage Meters plug and setting the reference to 0dB and 300ms integration time i noticed, as best I could, that the levels matched roughly.

thanks for the info.

[headquest]

Torben, thanks for your reply to my other questions!

i am getting warning messages about SPECTRA'S limitations after i get the warning about the MPL's limitations...even though spectra was uninstalled ages ago....so ther's a conflict there somewhere

I got that too...