KVR Audio

Kinh · Post by **Kinh** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 3:29 am

Shit, this thing is way overpriced

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:43 am

Kinh wrote:Shit, this thing is way overpriced

You could benefit from Pro-L2: just checking your tunes out on soundcloud. You master very loud and it causes a dense stream of clipping on the Soundcloud stream. You probably don't care but there it is.

Your music is really good! It could sound a lot better if you managed your loudness and clipping. Clipping like that causes audbile distortion that zaps sound quality.

End the loudness war.

sfxsound3 · Post by **sfxsound3** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:40 am

He could also benefit from pulling down the volume slider on the master bus. And that comes for free.

You know, the 'master as loud as possible, then pull down by -3 dB' trick. Clips? - no clips. Loud? - yes, very loud.

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 3:04 pm

sfxsound3 wrote:He could also benefit from pulling down the volume slider on the master bus. And that comes for free.

You know, the 'master as loud as possible, then pull down by -3 dB' trick. Clips? - no clips. Loud? - yes, very loud.

Probably not. I target -16 LUFS which is considered "too low" by most people. Even at that loudness I have peaks that clip and so use a limiter to prevent them. In order to prevent clipping without a limiter I'd have to go even lower than -16. That guy's loudness is between -12 and -8 LUFS so even 3dB on the master would not be enough to prevent clips.

But sure if you can't afford a good true peak limiter you have to do what you have to do. But a limiter will let you target whatever loudness you want while preventing clipping. However even with a true peak limiter and no clips in PCM, there will be clipping once conveted to a compressed format even with a loudness as low as -16 LUFS. There-in lies the problem and why we spend $ on these limiters.

Christian_D · Post by **Christian_D** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:30 pm

plexuss wrote:
Soundplex wrote:Checked with the hofa meter. No ISPs after limiting with ProL2 (true peak enabled).
Yes there are discrepancies. I wonder if there are different methods of attempting to meter ISPs and this determines what a given meter will report. The jury is still out. Not that it matters - use whatever limiter you like. It would be nice to have a reliable method for testing for ISPs however. I do know that RoundTripAU is accurate at least in that when I create a file I know that will not generate ISPs, it does not report them. Perhaps the Apple approach is using a more sensitive method than HOFA or other meters? Just something to consider... the occossional ISP is not going to be audible probably, but an ongoing stream of them will be. So far worst case with Pro-L2 it only throws them occassionally as reported with RoundTripAU.

HOFA and DPMeterII both throw ISPs with Pro-L2 in my testing. Not a continuous stream of them, but L2 is throwing them with 4x oversampling. *shrug*

ISP hofa dp.jpg

Apparently to accurately test for ISPs with AURoundTrip it has to be used via terminal command. Highly informed mastering engineer Holger Lagerfeld talks a little bit about it in this thread https://www.gearslutz.com/board/masteri ... tunes.html
I don't know how to do it I just set the plug-in to 128 and call it a day.

do_androids_dream · Post by **do_androids_dream** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:50 pm

plexuss wrote:But sure if you can't afford a good true peak limiter you have to do what you have to do. But a limiter will let you target whatever loudness you want while preventing clipping. However even with a true peak limiter and no clips in PCM, there will be clipping once conveted to a compressed format even with a loudness as low as -16 LUFS. There-in lies the problem and why we spend $ on these limiters.

No one needs a 'good true peak' limiter. The plugin companies will have you believe this but it's simply not true.

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:07 pm

It really depends on what your genre is and if you have the need to impress your peers/the ignorant audience.

I was rather shocked at how loud a lot of EDM is still pushed. Apparently it's gotten so far that it now is a definite part of the "sound". Even in todays streaming world where automatic gain compensation is starting to take over.

I still think youtube and other streaming services are partially to blame as their algorithms aren't all that consistent. In most cases the "louder" track will still sound a bit louder upon streaming.. which still leads to loudness wars as louder is generally perceived by the public as "better".

Anyhow, the future is indeed bright in all of this and at some point the brickwall limiter era that Waves started all those years ago will come to an end.

Mind you, a truly transparent limiter can be really beneficial on a track as well. Unfortunately it's not easy to create a truly transparent distortion free limiter with low latency which in turn makes it undesirable to pull out a traditional brickwall limiter on individual tracks (though I do just that.. but usually I render the results to keep the latency low).

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:12 pm

Christian_D wrote:
plexuss wrote:
Soundplex wrote:Checked with the hofa meter. No ISPs after limiting with ProL2 (true peak enabled).
Yes there are discrepancies. I wonder if there are different methods of attempting to meter ISPs and this determines what a given meter will report. The jury is still out. Not that it matters - use whatever limiter you like. It would be nice to have a reliable method for testing for ISPs however. I do know that RoundTripAU is accurate at least in that when I create a file I know that will not generate ISPs, it does not report them. Perhaps the Apple approach is using a more sensitive method than HOFA or other meters? Just something to consider... the occossional ISP is not going to be audible probably, but an ongoing stream of them will be. So far worst case with Pro-L2 it only throws them occassionally as reported with RoundTripAU.

HOFA and DPMeterII both throw ISPs with Pro-L2 in my testing. Not a continuous stream of them, but L2 is throwing them with 4x oversampling. *shrug*

ISP hofa dp.jpg
Apparently to accurately test for ISPs with AURoundTrip it has to be used via terminal command. Highly informed mastering engineer Holger Lagerfeld talks a little bit about it in this thread https://www.gearslutz.com/board/masteri ... tunes.html
I don't know how to do it I just set the plug-in to 128 and call it a day.

They are talking about ISPs in a compressed format, specifically AAC. Not the uncompressed render. No one has provided any evidence that RoundTripAAC is inaccurate in terms of metering ISPs. People have made bold statements about it but no proof has been put forth. I have posted many examples showing RoundTripAAC acting predictably when fed with audio that should and should not throw ISPs. So it appears that RoundTripAAC is at least pretty accurate.

If you do not feel that limiting or managing loundness or ISPs is important that's fine. You should do what you feel fit. We are only trying to help you make better sounding music. "We" being myself and other audio people who have deeper insight into this aspect of audio. Specifically, Bob Katz, Ian Shepard, et al. But if you don't care and don't feel it's important, good on 'ya.

Christian_D · Post by **Christian_D** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:25 pm

I care, just meant if the plug-in can pass the test for encoding AAC 128 that's good enough.

Stuart T · Post by **Stuart T** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:45 pm

I asked for advice from a well known plugin developer regarding their limiter and they said that for some genres isp’s don’t matter and to turn it off in their limiter for those genres.

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:02 pm

Stuart T wrote:I asked for advice from a well known plugin developer regarding their limiter and they said that for some genres isp’s don’t matter and to turn it off in their limiter for those genres.

LOL

Robert Randolph · Post by **Robert Randolph** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:06 pm

plexuss wrote:
Stuart T wrote:I asked for advice from a well known plugin developer regarding their limiter and they said that for some genres isp’s don’t matter and to turn it off in their limiter for those genres.
LOL

It can be true though. Some genres aren't limited so much that the potential ISPs come anywhere close to 0dbFS/0dbTP.

So the side effects of dealing with ISPS aren't necessary to burden yourself with in those cases.

Stuart T · Post by **Stuart T** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:10 pm

plexuss wrote:
Stuart T wrote:I asked for advice from a well known plugin developer regarding their limiter and they said that for some genres isp’s don’t matter and to turn it off in their limiter for those genres.
LOL

Yes that is exactly what I was told so lol all that you want. I would rather trust them over your own ideas thanks.

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:27 pm

Stuart T wrote:
plexuss wrote:
Stuart T wrote:I asked for advice from a well known plugin developer regarding their limiter and they said that for some genres isp’s don’t matter and to turn it off in their limiter for those genres.
LOL

Yes that is exactly what I was told so lol all that you want. I would rather trust them over your own ideas thanks.

The genre of the music is irrelevant. That's why I was laughing. If the music has at least 1dB of headroom from the highest peak in the uncompressed rendered format then yes you can ignore limiting and ISP management. The genre doesn't matter.

Stuart T · Post by **Stuart T** » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:33 pm

They told me that for the genre of music I asked about isp’s are nothing to be concerned about.

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