L316 Equivalent

[vectorwarrior]

I love Melda plugins and have finally ditched Waves almost completely in favor of the more advanced, flexible and better sounding offerings from Melda... with one exception. I can't recreate the sound of the Waves L316 in any of the Melda products.

I've grown to love the MMultibandLimiter, although I admit it took me a looong time to fully understand how to get the best out of it, but when it comes to adaptive and aggressive yet still clean limiting I just can't beat the L316. I was hoping that Spectral Dynamics followed by Dynamics Limiter would get me there but Spectral Dynamics lacks the ability to modify the attack/release times over the frequency spectrum and there is no (or very little) interaction between the bands, which is one of the reasons L316 has such a specific sound. For instance, in L316, you can change the 'priority' of the bands, which essentially increases the 'importance'' of (for example) the bass to the limiting algorithm, so it will try to protect those frequencies and limit others more. None of the melda plugins have this sort of 'interaction' between bands.

I own the L316, so it doesn't really matter, but i'd love to be able to totally ditch waves as I know a Melda version would be more flexible and ultimately sound better. And yes, I know some people dont like the L316, but for things like aggressive sound design there is nothing else like it. What do you say Vojtech? Is there a gap in your plug ins for a, i dont know,16 band linear-phase, band-interacting limiter?

I'm asking for too much again aren't i Keep up the great work.

[Chandlerhimself]

You can use spectral dynamics to effect only certain frequencies if you want. The equalizer control lets you do that I beleive. You can choose which frequencies are effected and how much. As far as attack and release goes you can't AFAIK, but with MXXX you can acutally make a multiband version of MSpectral dynamics, although that seems like overkill to me.

[Gamma-UT]

One possibility to create something similar to the priority behaviour would be to use an envelope follower modulator keyed to a source band that drives the threshold on a victim band. It's a bit of a faff to do for more than one or two bands though and getting the ranges and modulation right is probably going to be tricky, although I guess it could drive some fairly extreme effect for sound design.

[ZentralmassivSound]

You can use spectral dynamics to effect only certain frequencies if you want. The equalizer control lets you do that I beleive. You can choose which frequencies are effected and how much. As far as attack and release goes you can't AFAIK, but with MXXX you can acutally make a multiband version of MSpectral dynamics, although that seems like overkill to me.

As far as I understand it, the EQ in Spectral Dynamics is more or less just a post EQ, or in other words the target line for the flattening. So it does not control how much frequency range is affected but only what the desired output level in that range is.

A multiband setup of spectral dynamics seems really useful though, I often had the situtation that I wanted to flatten only specific ranges of the spectrum, so that could be done with multiband I guess.

[jmg8]

Spectral dynamics allows you to draw in custom shape threshold. This gives full control over which frequencies you want to affect. Also it does allow control over attack and release.

L316 is a single broadband limiter that reduces the gain equally in frequencies, with an EQ before it to drive certain frequencies harder (more limiting) before feeding into the limiter. However under the hood there are 16 bands which can reduce the amount of limiting independently for each band (priority feature).

This could be done inside MXXX, do you own that plugin?

[vectorwarrior]

The attack and release controls in spectral dynamics are global across the frequency spectrum, this severely limits it's sound shaping ability. I put in a request to change this a while back.

I don't get your comment about the l316 being a single broadband limiter, and then later saying it's a 16 band limiter. Also, yes, it has a pre limiting EQ, but it goes deeper than that as it has the priority feature and the different limiting modes change the attack release times for each of the 16 bands. I'm not interested in an EQ, that's easy to do in MXXX, but changing attack release times in different frequencies and having the band interaction is either impossible or highly impractical in the melda plugs, including mXXX.

[MeldaProduction]

Hmmm, well, you seem to really like many parameters . Ok, so, building a 16 band crossover with a limiter in each band isn't such a big deal (though quite frankly it seems like an overkill a little). But I don't see much you are talking about in L316 really. It indeed seems like a limiter with EQ preprocessor. You can simply build a limiter from MDynamics and use the sidechain EQ as the "priority" (actually even the word priority doesn't much here - true priority would be sorting the bands based on some algorithm, not just preprocessing...but well Waves...). Or if you want multiband, you can build one from MMultiBandDynamics with MDynamicsLimiter or MMultiBandSaturator after it for example (for final clipping). Or if you want more bands then MXXX is the answer indeed.

So what am I missing?

[jmg8]

Ok, firstly I have only used this plugin once a long time ago. I was interested in the original post here, so I read the user guide cover to cover, it's quite interesting.

A multiband limiter will change the balance of a mix because some bands will have more gain reduction than others. Typically the bass could be compressed more than the treble. With a broad band limiter all the frequencies are attenuated by an equal amount. This is exactly what L3 16 does which is why i described it as a broadband limiter.

However it uses 16 bands that allow for less gain reduction in user defined frequencies. This they call priority. However it is not actually a pre eq, but rather a superimposed eq curve that tells the 16 bands how to behave. This simply changes the thresholds to allow for less limiting in those bands. To give "priority" to certain frequencies makes them louder, as it compresses them less.

Up to this stage Vojtech's solution is exactly correct. Using a single limiter with a sidechain eq can achieve the same result.

The tricky bit though is that there are some preset attack and release behaviour algorithms that use different automatic release settings for each of the 16 bands. These presets do not allow the user to individually change the attack and release setting for each band, but are rather an overall preset of the release character, which they describe as for example "clean digital" or "warm analogue"

Now its confusing as obviously (to me) there are 16 individual limiters but unless you use the priority or release character presets it behaves exactly like a broadband limiter, attenuating all the bands equally, unlike a traditional multiband limiter. That call this their patent pending PLM peak limiting mixer. Which they claim has less distortion with more transparent heavy limiting. This I then all topped of with up sampling and dithering.

Now from what i understand, we could make a 16 band limiter in MXXX that has different auto release settings for all the bands. But I'm not sure how to make these bands all apply the same amount of gain reduction. What we would need is a way to use just one control to apply the correct amount of threshold to each band to equal the same amount of attenuation across all 16 bands. Ideally if the gain reduction value on the meter was modulatable this would be easy. This would be a handy feature as sometimes I might want to apply exactly 4db of gain reduction, if I could just click and drag or type in a value on gain reduction on the meter it would be easy. Also Vojtech mention that 16 might be overkill. I think the reason for so many bands is because of the super imposed EQ curves (not an actual EQ) that allow the user to change the amount of gain, frequency and Q (just like a normal EQ) which is then reflected in the bands. So the more bands the more natural and transparent this will sound.

I hope this explains thing more clearly.
In conclusion however I think that MSpectralDynamics is a much more powerful tool, when properly used.

[vectorwarrior]

Yeah, spectral dynamics is certainly more flexible. That's why I love melda stuff.

I'm going to have to try some tests to see if I can clarify my issue, I'll post here if I get time to make some solid results. By the way, if you get a chance to test it out, try the overall punch preset and really push it on a drum track, it is DEFINITELY changing the character of the sounds beyond straight limiting, it's those attack release settings that really transform the sounds. I've tried replicating what I think it's doing in a 6 band melda and can't get close.

I've made a 24 band limiter in MXXX, maybe I'll try adapting that.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone

[vectorwarrior]

Arg, so tried making an EQ'd detector signal for a limiter... but the side chain equalizer settings are not modulatable or multi-parameter-able, so it has to be done in MXXX using a side chain with a Dynamic EQ (which is multi-parameterable) on the side chain. Unfortunately, you then run out of coloumns in MXXX (as you need one for the EQ and one for the limiter) so have to use Modular nodes to create more 'space'. I got this working okay, and you would obviously have to use the global band system to create 4 or 6 bands of this exact setup (but with tweaked crossovers obviously) to create a 16 or 24 band limiter with a sort of EQ priority setup.

MXXX.png

Also, the limiters (dynamics limiter, ultra maximiser and multiband limiter) do not have sidechain inputs, neither do the MXXX versions, so it can only be done with Dynamics, which is fine I guess, just an observation.

This doesn't resolve the issue of nicely modifiable attack/release times, but i guess i can make multiparameter banks of settings i think work that people can morph between. I'm not sure if this will all replicate the sound or interaction in L316, but I'll give it a go.

Anyway, i'll spend more time getting this to work, if I can get it sounding really nice I'll post it here and will email to Vojtech. The hardest part is setting up the 24 bands, all the parameters, crossovers (calculator needed!) and multiparameters will take ages.

[ZentralmassivSound]

With a broad band limiter all the frequencies are attenuated by an equal amount.
[...]
This simply changes the thresholds to allow for less limiting in those bands.

These statements are contradictory, aren't they?

[jmg8]

That all makes sense. However something missing here is how would you make all those limiters apply an equal amount of gain reduction for all the bands?
That is the whole point of L3 16, I only has 1 threshold and sounds and behaves like a normal limiter for the most part, only using priority would change this behaviour for certain bands. The other problem is the auto release presets are going to hard to recreate from ear, I have no idea how we would get it to sound the same as L3 16.

[jmg8]

With a broad band limiter all the frequencies are attenuated by an equal amount.
[...]
This simply changes the thresholds to allow for less limiting in those bands.

These statements are contradictory, aren't they?

Yes, that correct I am aware that these statements ar contradictory. It starts out behaving like a broadband limiter not multiband, as all the frequencies are attenuated by the same amount, however IF you choose to use the "priority" feature, this will over ride this behaviour. But for the most part it tries to keep the balance of your mix the same.

[MeldaProduction]

Hmmm, ok so:

1) Vectorwarrior, please try to make some concept to proof this makes sense. If it works out, we can try designing a plugin from it.

2) From what you are folks saying that thing does, it indeed seems contradictory. You cannot apply the same amount of gain reduction to all bands, in fact that would be completely useless! The point is that you do NOT apply the same gain reduction, a multiband limiter performs as much gain reduction in each band as necessary, so that if there's at one point too much highs, it lowers the highs, but not the rest of the bands.
So again, if I take all you are saying, it looks like either that plugin is indeed just a broadband limiter with a sidechain eq, or a multiband limiter with a sidechain eq, that's all, nothing so awesome. And sorry, but I'm taking Waves' trademarks very seriously...

[Boone777]

The "Range" parameter is used to make sure compression doesnt exceed a certain amount of dB. I think that's the closest to same compression (limiting) on each band you can get without making it a plain normal limiter, while keeping some differences between split bands dynamics.