Is there a Brickwall-Limiter plugin with external sidechain?

[jbweimar]

hey ray12,

i'm dealing with exactly the same issue right now (for different reasons). i've tried many compressors and am running into the same problems. if you skype me, we can maybe beat this thing together? my handle is jweimar.

best,
joris

[djscorb]

DMG Compassion has an external sidechain AND the lookahead, hold and smoothing options required to design a reasonably good mastering limiter.

My advice though would be to bounce the full stereo mix and have that feed the sidechain, rather than attempting to feed the SC with the output of the master bus in real time. This will let you shift the bounced master track back in time equal to the desired lookahead (negating the need for using the lookahead within Compassion). This will allow the sidechain to react in time to catch the faster events withut having to use time travel! The hold and smoothing parameters should usually be set to the same as the lookahead and you can experiment with this time from a fraction of a millisecond up to a few milliseconds.

This is the best way I know of attempting what you need, but I think you would do well to settle for at least 1dB less than if using a dedicated modern mastering limiter. For performing or DJing using stems, it's not hard to simply turn the gain on the mixer up a smidge to match previous levels.

Good luck!

Scorb

Edited for typo.

[Novalis]

Also, don't assume that so-called "brickwall" limiters absolutely never let anything through above the target level. In practice, most do. That why you don't set your brickwall target at 0 dB.

A proper brickwall limiter lets absolutely nothing through over the set ceiling.

If you have one that does, I would change it for a different limiter.

[garfield78]

Hi to all , here a limiter with side chain fonction : http://xhip.net/effects/

[jbweimar]

yes, a brickwall limiter should not let any signal over the specified ceiling by design.

djscorb: thank you for your advice. i hadn't even thought of the lookahead issue yet. your idea of bouncing the full stereo first, and using an offset version of the bounce as sidechain is fantastic! i'll try to remember to post back here with results.

[djscorb]

[Ray12]

DMG Compassion has an external sidechain AND the lookahead, hold and smoothing options required to design a reasonably good mastering limiter.

My advice though would be to bounce the full stereo mix and have that feed the sidechain, rather than attempting to feed the SC with the output of the master bus in real time. This will let you shift the bounced master track back in time equal to the desired lookahead (negating the need for using the lookahead within Compassion). This will allow the sidechain to react in time to catch the faster events withut having to use time travel! The hold and smoothing parameters should usually be set to the same as the lookahead and you can experiment with this time from a fraction of a millisecond up to a few milliseconds.

This is the best way I know of attempting what you need, but I think you would do well to settle for at least 1dB less than if using a dedicated modern mastering limiter. For performing or DJing using stems, it's not hard to simply turn the gain on the mixer up a smidge to match previous levels.

Good luck!

Scorb

Edited for typo.

Thank djscorb!
I tested DMG Compassion. it works pretty well if I settle for 1dB less that 0dB for the maximum peak in the stems.
I started with the "boxed in" preset and lowered the master gain of Logic X by 1dB when I was bouncing the stems.
If I wouldn't lower the master gain of Logic X by 1dB the maximum peak would be just slightly above 0dB if I play back all the stems at the same time.

For the sidechain I created a bus with no output and routed all the channel via "send" to that bus.

I haven't figured out how to use a bounce of the full mix for the side chain.
It makes no sense to have limiter on the master chanel when I make the bounce for my side-chain-track.
If I have no limiter in the master chanel when I make the bounce for my side-chain -track, then the audio file is clipped

[Ray12]

Hi to all , here a limiter with side chain fonction : http://xhip.net/effects/

Thanks, garfield78.
Unfortunately I'm on OSX, whil this one is for Windows only.

[Ah_Dziz]

The melda limiter and multi band limiter and dynamics and multi band dynamics all have sidechain inputs the problem I see here is the insane amount of routing. Bouncing a 32 bit floating point .wav of the master out with no limiter and then using that as the sidechain is the only way of avoiding bizarre feedback problems. Most daws can't route backward to processors earlier in the signal path without imposing a full buffer of delay on the signal which I think would offset the pumping effect you want. You could also use post fader sends on every individual track to a group and use that as the sidechain input, but then the sidechain doesn't contain any processing done at the group level which would again give you a different effect than you seem to want. The bounce method seems the most realistic (and will also only work if it's a floating point file). Try out the melda stuff it's got routing options out the wang.

[Ah_Dziz]

Just saw where you said you were having problems with the bounce. You'll need to either offset the gain to avoid clipping and then bring the level back up when you import the file again ( which would be a destructive process and would essentially lower the bit rate of the file) or export the full mix with no limiter and make sure that the export format is a floating point file which will preserve all the data above 0DBFS.

[Boone777]

Also Melda MSpectralDynamics might do the trick. You can find all of them in MXXX: Mlimiter,MSpectralDynamics,MDynamics,MUltramiximiser.

I'm not sure but Maybe something like Blue Cat's MB-7 has side-chain ? So you can load any limiter you want in there. Or Maybe another vst host like that.

[Ah_Dziz]

Even though the subhost has an input, the plugin you put inside it has to have an input as well.

[Novalis]

Just found this: Blue Cat's Protector has a side-chain.

http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_Protector/

Haven't tried it though, so don't know how good or bad the plug-in is.

[icanusethisone]

Wondering if 5 years later there have been any updates to this, news ways of doing this, new compressors or limiters.
Thanks !

[AKJ]

Just use a compressor with side-chain before the brickwall limiter. I believe an external side-chain control is somewhat contradictory to the basic concept of a brickwall limiter.