The Best Free Mastering Limiter

[Windows]

In the free world of mastering limiters, it's hard to find one that truly meets professional standards—most lack true peak limiting, no release control (like loudmax), and no stereo link/unlink, or they introduce unwanted distortion at high frequencies, transient smearing, muddiness, or are CPU hogs like Limiter No6. Some older gems are still 32-bit only (like maxwell smart), making them either unusable, difficult to work with, or simply low quality for high-quality mastering.

But TB Barricade Version 3 breaks this pattern—offering adjustable lookahead parameter, optional true peak limiting, attack and release controls, stereo link/unlink parameter, dithering, noise shaping, multiband limiting, and accurate gain reduction metering—all for free.
It's part of the TB Legacy Plugins bundle:

Windows: https://www.toneboosters.com/downloads/ ... cy_win.zip

MacOS: https://www.toneboosters.com/downloads/ ... cy_mac.zip

TB Barricade V3 -ToneBoosters.png

[ampetrosillo]

ReaLimit works well in my opinion. You can set TP limiting, it has a release control, and it sounds quite transparent.

[Windows]

ReaLimit works well in my opinion. You can set TP limiting, it has a release control, and it sounds quite transparent.

Yes, it's good just that the release sound too long no matter how fast you set it. It seems the range has been hard coded to be long to avoid distortion. You can try adjusting the release and compare it to a limiter with clearly defined release in ms or seconds. Also, there are some orchestra mix I just want to use stereo unlink on my limiter, but it doesn't have that.

[onerob]

Reflex limiter and Wave Breaker both sound fine but don't have stereo linking control. Reflex sounds linked and Wave Breaker sounds unlinked to me.

[RunBeerRun]

I bought barricade a while back, I think it takes an installer now and dependencies.

[Download SOphist]

don´t know about mastering, but Loudmax is free and good.

https://loudmax.blogspot.com

[yzcoruhT]

don´t know about mastering, but Loudmax is free and good.

https://loudmax.blogspot.com

+ VST3 and resizable UI /= all I need for finishing my tracks/

(He mentioned LoudMax, with lack of release knob.)

[Download SOphist]

Oh, my bad

[Sverkhu]

I still use Buzzroom and its realy nice to my mind https://www.kvraudio.com/product/buzmaxi_by_buzzroom

[Krakatau]

don´t know about mastering, but Loudmax is free and good.

https://loudmax.blogspot.com

I agree loudmax isn't new, ...but excellent

[houlihan]

TB Barricade v3 is definitely one of the better free limiters out there. It covers a lot of what’s missing in most other free options, especially with true peak limiting and proper attack/release controls. The fact that it includes dithering and multiband limiting is a nice bonus too. Have you tested it against paid options like FabFilter Pro-L2 or Sonnox? Curious how it holds up in real mastering scenarios.