What is Best matering limiter for electronic music? in 2023 (which do not sound harsh)

[Prototech]

What is Best matering limiter for electronic music? in 2023 (which do not sound harsh)

most of them sounds harsh on mid/top end / transients etc. especially if you master only in the box (yes there are tricks but usually they are just compromises - makes trebles softer but lost clarity, add mudiness etc.)

[enroe]

What is Best matering limiter ...

Mmmh, what is "matering"?

[cryophonik]

He meant “mastering.” He obviously made a typo that carried over when copied/pasted it.

[legendCNCD]

How deep are you limiting if you run into these issues? Cut the peaks in the mix and make the mix as loud as you need to..

[musikarldererste]

stock limiter from bitwig , you can buy bitwig
and export your track and import in bitwig worth the 300$ its the best , trust me

[Uncle E]

Use Pulsar Audio Mu and Massive first, those will smooth out the frequencies you're concerned about. Then put a brickwall after.

[LenR_here]

Voxengo Elephant is very transparent limiter and has customizable transient response. Has up to 8x oversampling for mastering purposes, so don't worry about harshness.

[enroe]

What is the best mastering limiter for electronic music?
In 2023, limiter, which do not sound harsh?

Most of them sound harsh on mid/top end /transients etc. Especially if
you master only in the box! Yes, there are tricks, but usually they are just
compromises - make treble softer but loose clarity, add muddiness etc.

Almost all DAWs now have excellent limiters on board that are ideally
suited for mastering.

If the "limiting" sounds harsh and ugly, then in 99.9% of cases it's not the
limiter's fault, but the user's setting of the limiter. In other words, any
limiter, even the most expensive ones, will sound harsh and spiky if set
appropriately.

My recommendation is therefore a completely different one:

Grab your DAW's stock limiter (or stock compressor) and learn how to use it.
Learn which knob does what and how it sounds. This will give you a sense
of "limiting" and then you'll get closer to your goal of a louder mix that
sounds good.

A sharp, unattractively harsh sound is often due to the mixing itself. A
limiter cannot change that. But when something is compressed, this
"harshness" often comes to the fore even more. So most of the time
it's better to go back to the mix.

[legendCNCD]

If the "limiting" sounds harsh and ugly, then in 99.9% of cases it's not the
limiter's fault.
A sharp, unattractively harsh sound is often due to the mixing itself. A
limiter cannot change that. But when something is compressed, this
"harshness" often comes to the fore even more. So most of the time
it's better to go back to the mix.

These here. When your mix is fine (depending), you might notice the limiter doesnt do much anymore. Maybe 1 to 2dB is shaved off in the end (depending).

Limit or cut peaks in the mix, make the mix sound like its finished before slapping "master processor" on it

[LenR_here]

What is the best mastering limiter for electronic music?
In 2023, limiter, which do not sound harsh?

Most of them sound harsh on mid/top end /transients etc. Especially if
you master only in the box! Yes, there are tricks, but usually they are just
compromises - make treble softer but loose clarity, add muddiness etc.

Almost all DAWs now have excellent limiters on board that are ideally
suited for mastering.

If the "limiting" sounds harsh and ugly, then in 99.9% of cases it's not the
limiter's fault, but the user's setting of the limiter. In other words, any
limiter, even the most expensive ones, will sound harsh and spiky if set
appropriately.

My recommendation is therefore a completely different one:

Grab your DAW's stock limiter (or stock compressor) and learn how to use it.
Learn which knob does what and how it sounds. This will give you a sense
of "limiting" and then you'll get closer to your goal of a louder mix that
sounds good.

A sharp, unattractively harsh sound is often due to the mixing itself. A
limiter cannot change that. But when something is compressed, this
"harshness" often comes to the fore even more. So most of the time
it's better to go back to the mix.

I partially disagree, the stock limiters are not great if you do want it to do some moderate to heavy lifting. Yes, you can take a lot of load off the limiter by mixing for loudness (eg. clipping at multiple stages, sidechaining and volume shaping) to get the stock limiter to sound good. However, this is quite a technical task and not every genre requires it.

Paid limiters like Voxengo Elephant and Pro-L2 will sound transparent and amazing out of the box while applying a sizeable amount of gain reduction. Of course there's a limit to how far you can push them before artifacts start creeping it, but that limit is far higher than the stock limiters. If you're a musician who isn't interested in the technical aspects of mixing and mastering then these paid limiters are going to outperform the stock plugins easily.

[enroe]

I partially disagree, the stock limiters are not great if you do want it to do some moderate to heavy lifting. Yes, you can take a lot of load off the limiter by mixing for loudness (eg. clipping at multiple stages, sidechaining and volume shaping) to get the stock limiter to sound good. However, this is quite a technical task and not every genre requires it.

Paid limiters like Voxengo Elephant and Pro-L2 will sound transparent and amazing out of the box while applying a sizeable amount of gain reduction. Of course there's a limit to how far you can push them before artifacts start creeping it, but that limit is far higher than the stock limiters. If you're a musician who isn't interested in the technical aspects of mixing and mastering then these paid limiters are going to outperform the stock plugins easily.

The stock compressors and limiters - at least from Logic, Cubase and
Reaper - are excellent. And in 99.9% of all cases they are perfectly sufficient
to get even complicated tracks under control and to make them sound good.

The most important thing - as with everything else - is the ear of the mixer or
mastering engineer. The setting of a limiter or compressor is the decisive
factor: how many transients do I want to let through? At what point should the
compression take effect?

Knowing the type of compression and having a vision of what kind of sound
sculpting I want is crucial! And I can do that really well with the stock
compressors. And if I know how, I can also limit heavily without severe
distortion.

Many beginners have often succumbed to the marketing lingo and then
believe they can get better results with an expensive 3rd party plugin with an
awesome GUI. But oftentimes, a good-looking GUI dazzles and draws all
attention away from the audio signal to the visual GUI experience.

[twal]

Non-stock plugins are good for color, flavor, character, effect and workflow. Nothing necessary about adding them to your daw. You can leave that up to the Engineer.

[LenR_here]

I partially disagree, the stock limiters are not great if you do want it to do some moderate to heavy lifting. Yes, you can take a lot of load off the limiter by mixing for loudness (eg. clipping at multiple stages, sidechaining and volume shaping) to get the stock limiter to sound good. However, this is quite a technical task and not every genre requires it.

Paid limiters like Voxengo Elephant and Pro-L2 will sound transparent and amazing out of the box while applying a sizeable amount of gain reduction. Of course there's a limit to how far you can push them before artifacts start creeping it, but that limit is far higher than the stock limiters. If you're a musician who isn't interested in the technical aspects of mixing and mastering then these paid limiters are going to outperform the stock plugins easily.

The stock compressors and limiters - at least from Logic, Cubase and
Reaper - are excellent. And in 99.9% of all cases they are perfectly sufficient
to get even complicated tracks under control and to make them sound good.

They definitely aren't excellent. To be specific, they often don't have oversampling (Reaper is an exception as newer versions can toggle oversampling on any plugin, from your examples Logic and Cubase lack it, and so do many other stock limiters), so you'll get aliasing. You only have attack and release parameters, you lack the ability to change things like transient response.

Having said that I agree with everything else. You can use skills to overcome a lot of problems in audio engineering. I just think it's disingenuous to say all stock plugins are as good as paid plugins, when they are cases where they definitely aren't. You can get somewhat similar results if you are skilled, but it's often at the cost of workflow and convenience.

EDIT: Just to add another example. Stock reverbs usually aren't very good. The best one I've heard recently is FL Studio's new reverb, if you use that it probably rivals paid alternatives, but other than that, getting a decent quality reverb goes along way.

[_leras]

Elephant is great. It has different modes so can be used to hard clip stray transients before a compressor as well as for more end of chail duties.

[Mathematics]

I think the word is transparent. If using a limiter is producing negative results, there are a few things that could cause this.
Firstly, the signal may not be ready for limiting: too many large peaks, poorly mixed, or too much bass.
Secondly, you're pushing the signal too aggressively into the limiter which causes too much gain reduction.
Lastly, you may be using the wrong type of limiter style for the job and or using the incorrect settings.

I don't have the time to explain detailed instructions, so I will just say...consider using clippers, multi-stage limiting and clipping, and understand the differences between multi- and single-band limiting.

Some limiters I use with great success are the DS1, Limitless, Oxford Limiter, L2, and Elevate.

To smooth out the highs...have you tried tape emulation? That usually is a fast solution. If you have troublesome highs...there is one plugin that is kind of a Swiss Army Knife for such problems and others; it's called ProAudioDSP DSM V3. It actually is a limiter but it's far more than just that. It can, potentially, smooth out anything. Two more plugins that can smooth out harshness is Soothe and MSpectralDynamics. Both are great but they serve different purposes.