School me on the role limiters play in mixing

[Jafo]

Smash it so it's really loud, then push it into a reverb.

Ahh yes, the Phil Collins sound.

When gated, yes indeed.

[digitalboytn]

From the look of it, Beethoven was post-punk.

I think that scene was just before the cleaning lady came in, Hoovering the carpet.

[Mind Riot]

So I'm actually using it correctly.

Huh. Wasn't expecting that.

[cron]

I haven't used limiters much in the mixing process, and the only real application I've used them for is if I need something louder in the mix but I'm out of headroom, so I smash it down a bit with a limiter to get a bit more loudness out of it.

I do want to pick up on this "out of headroom" comment because I wonder if you're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

You don't really ever run out of headroom when in-the-box because you can just turn down the master channel. Some plugins can clip internally, but AFAIK the mixing engine in basically every DAW is floating point. You never truly 'clip' in a floating point audio engine until you do the final mixdown to (integer) wav/aiff - all the peaks above 0db can be losslessly recovered by either turning down the master channel or, if you've got plugins on the master, using your DAW's gain device at the start of the chain.

Using a limiter to increase the perceptual loudness of a part without a corresponding increase in peak values is totally legit of course. It just wouldn't necessarily be my first port of call in an "out of headroom" situation because turning down the master when its clipping doesn't come with any sonic penalty in a DAW.

[jamcat]

From the look of it, Beethoven was post-punk.

I think that scene was just before the cleaning lady came in, Hoovering the carpet.

Yes. Here's the original, full skit.

[machinesworking]

Was Beethoven gay ?

I thought this sort of shit humor was long gone, guess I was wrong.

[MogwaiBoy]

Not much use for limiting in mixing - much rather use clipping.

[legendCNCD]

Not much use for limiting in mixing - much rather use clipping.

Both are handy in mixing, depends how much one needs to do and what is the desired character. Clipping high peaks with softclip can sometimes work, but sometimes its limiter.
Sometimes its both to get to desired level. Some synth patches can output massive spikes (and DC offset bumps to be filtered away).

[Mind Riot]

I do want to pick up on this "out of headroom" comment because I wonder if you're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

You don't really ever run out of headroom when in-the-box because you can just turn down the master channel. Some plugins can clip internally, but AFAIK the mixing engine in basically every DAW is floating point. You never truly 'clip' in a floating point audio engine until you do the final mixdown to (integer) wav/aiff - all the peaks above 0db can be losslessly recovered by either turning down the master channel or, if you've got plugins on the master, using your DAW's gain device at the start of the chain.

Using a limiter to increase the perceptual loudness of a part without a corresponding increase in peak values is totally legit of course. It just wouldn't necessarily be my first port of call in an "out of headroom" situation because turning down the master when its clipping doesn't come with any sonic penalty in a DAW.

You are of course correct sir.

Makes me wonder why we have red zones at the top of our meters in floating point DAWs if they're meaningless. Just to make high gain spots easy to find if we're overloading the master bus, I suppose?

[osiris]

One of the problems I run into is you have a synth riff that's where you need it to be, except maybe there's a note or two that redlines. You can do two things. Edit the Velocity or put a Limiter on it so it will ALL play at that level. I don't like to edit velocity because that can change the character of your riff.

[Uncle E]

Multiband mid-side clipping followed by multiband mid-side limiting.