Best limiter

[dionenoid]

Many stocks are made just for the tick. Like: "we've got it too!"

So what's the difference with most 3rd party stuff ?

[Igro]

Many stocks are made just for the tick. Like: "we've got it too!"

So what's the difference with most 3rd party stuff ?

Quality. Functionalty. Well, obviously, that a plugin like a hard-clipper will be the same (but even here 3d party plugins went beyond just that).

[ampetrosillo]

Many stocks are made just for the tick. Like: "we've got it too!"

So what's the difference with most 3rd party stuff ?

Quality. Functionalty. Well, obviously, that a plugin like a hard-clipper will be the same (but even here 3d party plugins went beyond just that).

But why?

Do you think that, somehow, third-party developers are better than DAW developers?

[Zeisner]

No audio company has the resources to make a good DAW and include good stock plugins. Programming even a mediocre DAW is already a nightmare just like one good limiter.

[carrieres]

Ableton has collaborated with Cytomic, Softube and AAS AFAIK

[Zeisner]

...because no company got the resources to cover everything at high quality. It's just too complex.

[ksandvik]

I think the best limiter is any limiter that shows what the limiting was done on the waveform -- same with clippers. Very helpful. You could really key in the amount.

[SoftSynthLover99]

No audio company has the resources to make a good DAW and include good stock plugins. Programming even a mediocre DAW is already a nightmare just like one good limiter.

You are very misinformed. Logic Pro for example which is what I use daily has some truly great stock plugins. Including the underrated adaptive limiter.

Most modern DAWs have excellent stock plugins that are just as good as some 3rd party options. And they are definitely good enough to deliver pro level mixes these days.

[Zeisner]

You are very misinformed.

...says the one who writes things like this:

Nothing to really fix as all plugins have some form of aliasing.

...which is still not true. Math is not an opinion.

Logic Pro for example which is what I use daily has some truly great stock plugins.

Prove it by measuring them. I don't care about "It's good bro!" because that's no proof. Neither for high nor for low quality. There is such a thing as objective quality and it can be measured. Part of this quality is the level of aliasing.

I looked the current Logic Pro limiter up (as an example) and, well... where is the controller to dial in the oversampling factor? Don't tell me that oversampling is only supported via offline rendering, that alone would be, well... not good, considering that third-party limiters exist with variable (and sometimes even high) oversampling while supporting online rendering at the same time (which means you can hear the sound without having to render a file for playback first - "live").

On the other hand... how could you even measure aliasing levels of a limiter if you don't understand what aliasing is?

[kritikon]

No audio company has the resources to make a good DAW and include good stock plugins. Programming even a mediocre DAW is already a nightmare just like one good limiter.

That's quite spurious. Many (I suspect most) DAWs contain 3rd party plugins. It's not unusual to have some kind of contract where these 3rd party ones come under the name of the DAW but they're not actually coded by Logic/Cubase etc. Both Logic and Cubase absolutely include 3rd party plugins, I don't use any of the others so I don't know, but TBH I'd be incredibly surprised if Ableton etc code all their own stuff.

And no I'm not going to name them all, it's documented history so do your own research. There's a long list of plugin companies that have come and gone by being eaten up by DAW companies. It still regularly happens in Cubase that they lose plugins from one version to the next...because of contractual etc issues. Camel Audio immediately springs to mind - are they suddenly crap just because they were swallowed up by Apple? I used to use some Camel stuff and they were superb distortion/crusher type things, never mind their world-leading sampler. Sad to see them go over to the dark side. But really they didn't overnight forget how to code great sounding FX just because they suck at the Apple tit.

So...why are these independent 3rd party FX so much better than the 3rd party FX that sign contracts with DAWs?

[SoftSynthLover99]

You are very misinformed.

...says the one who writes things like this:

Nothing to really fix as all plugins have some form of aliasing.

...which is still not true. Math is not an opinion.

Logic Pro for example which is what I use daily has some truly great stock plugins.

Prove it by measuring them. I don't care about "It's good bro!" because that's no proof. Neither for high nor for low quality. There is such a thing as objective quality and it can be measured. Part of this quality is the level of aliasing.

I looked the current Logic Pro limiter up (as an example) and, well... where is the controller to dial in the oversampling factor? Don't tell me that oversampling is only supported via offline rendering, that alone would be, well... not good, considering that third-party limiters exist with variable (and sometimes even high) oversampling while supporting online rendering at the same time (which means you can hear the sound without having to render a file for playback first - "live").

On the other hand... how could you even measure aliasing levels of a limiter if you don't understand what aliasing is?

I don’t think you understand what aliasing is. Math and Music are two very different disciplines. If I clip my analog pre amps and drive them into saturation, that is technically the incorrect way to operate them. However that distorted pushed pre amp sound is the sound of a lot of great records past and present. You can even run outboard gear through plugin doctor and get all kinds of irregularities that make zero sense technically, but sound great in a musical context.

So with music, analyzers are not the only way measure the quality of plugins or gear in general. You have to use your ears and it’s no way around that. Something like decapitator can show tons of aliasing on a graph, but put it on drums or vocals or guitars and it just sounds great in a mix.

And with Logic Pro adaptive limiter I run my sessions at high sample rates, so aliasing is not an issue on any of my plugins. The only way to know if a limiter sounds good is to run music through it, not run it through plugin doctor.

Measurement tools can be useful to learn why a plugin sounds good or bad, but can also lead people to become way too biased and reliant on that instead of their ears. Which is what I suspect has happened with you. You care more about what looks correct on a graph vs what sounds good.

[Igro]

For instance, a FET compressor emulation. Those in Presonus Studio One and Steinberg Cubase - they are very mediocre. 3rd party emulations are way better. I wish they never included even them, because they are there just for the "tick".

[El°HYM]

To be fair and while Logic is indeed a nice exception, most stock tools are just pretty mediocre. The old Ableton limiter was horrible, the compressor not much more than lower standard, the Glue is actually quite good, yet falls way behind its plugin counterpart by the same developer.

[DCrown]

I'm going to recommend a plugin that's fantastic. Not going to tell you what it is though, it's a secret.

Yes, you can tell what compressor, reverb or delay you use, but never tell what limiter you use!
I mean it is the last plugin in your chain, the last plugin decides whether a mix will be good or not, so keep it secret.

[jtsterays]

Gotta give a shout out to the IK stealth one. I just tried it on a song and 5 seconds in, I got louder LUFs while having less distortion & pumping than all the others I currently use (I tried all the top tiers too). Pretty sure it's single band because I don't hear any tonal change (I dislike multiband limiters). And it's extremely simple to use too.
Ofc it's just 1 example, I need to test on more stuff but first impression is wow, what the f*ck have I been missing out on.