Glow Shrimp Limiter

[ampetrosillo]

Since I saw it mentioned a few days ago, I tried it out.
It's really good! Very transparent.

https://glowshrimpsoftware.com/gsLimiter.html

[Vortifex]

Yeah it's actually not bad. Very bare bones, no visual feedback or true peak, but it's lightweight and free.

[Nug Wrangler]

Thanks for the heads up

[Download SOphist]

anybody got to install it on a Mac?

[ampetrosillo]

Yeah it's actually not bad. Very bare bones, no visual feedback or true peak, but it's lightweight and free.

I use Reaper, so I can just use ReaEQ + Gain Reduction Scope before and after. As for true peak, after reading up on the issue, I think it's a bit of an obsession. With real world music, TP may be 0.1-0.2dB higher than 0dBFS. Nothing that should cause even the cheapest DAC to misbehave (and if it does, there are probably much worse issues well before full scale).

[onerob]

anybody got to install it on a Mac?

I emailed the guy and told him that the download didn't actually contain the plugin files, only aliases. He said he doesn't know enough about Macs to know how to fix it, so unless a Mac user compiles it himself there's no way to try it.

[Andreya_Autumn]

So, this seems cool but uh... a side channel HPF at 344Hz on the master really isn't "recommended" in most circumstances IMO.

[Download SOphist]

anybody got to install it on a Mac?

I emailed the guy and told him that the download didn't actually contain the plugin files, only aliases. He said he doesn't know enough about Macs to know how to fix it, so unless a Mac user compiles it himself there's no way to try it.

ok, thanks for the nfo

[enroe]

As mentioned earlier, I created Glow Shrimp Limiter after shopping for a good limiter and not being able to find exactly what I wanted.

The closest competitor is probably a free limiter called Unlimited by Sonic Anomaly. Make no mistake, Unlimited is a very good limiter. However, I personally don't like how the release sounds (it takes a long time to come back after something ridiculously loud, something TL's Pocket Limiter didn't do), and the 5.1 surround features detract from it's simplicity. It's controls are also very large, and it took more CPU than Glow Shrimp Limiter in my tests.

As mentioned earlier, TL's Pocket Limiter is free and it used to be my go-to limiter, but it's 32-bit only. I also mentioned JSFX, which includes some great-sounding limiters such as my own Starfish Limiter and Geraint Luff's Smooth Limiter, but those have quite high CPU use.

Waves Limiters just plain don't sound good to me. They sound quite crunchy and some of them seem to mess with the sound quite a bit. Fabfilter Pro-L 2 is probably one of the most popular limiters out there right now. When I demo'd it I felt it took a lot of CPU, had a lot of features I didn't want/need, and seemed to cause weird swoops in volume when things got very loud/quiet. I'm sure this could be adjusted, but as mentioned I'm a fan of dead-simple limiters. Plus it's very expensive.

The Ozone Maximizer and Limitless mess with the sound a lot (at least, most presets do), use tons of CPU, and are very expensive.

As far as other free limiters, Xhip Limiter showed clipping in REAPER and didn't have very transparent compression, easyLimiter showed clipping in REAPER in my tests and didn't sound very transparent, Frontier also seemed to clip in REAPER and used more CPU than Unlimited for a very similar sound, Limited-Z used a lot of CPU and just sounded really bad (it sounded exactly like a clipper when pushed hard!), Limiter No6 used lots of CPU and messed with the sound a lot, and LoudMax was, despite the name, not the loudest limiter I could find.

Interesting story - especially the comparisons!

Thank you so much for this great limiter!

[kerfuffle]

If the original author open sources the code and uploads it to GitHub or a similar place, I'd be happy to make a Mac version.

[ampetrosillo]

He was open to... open-sourcing it (pun not intended). Maybe I'll send him an e-mail. Also, we could expose some of its internal parameters (having a look at Starfish Limiter, a JS plugin, as well as the HPFs - which could use some frequency selection - some other parameters could be useful to modify).