KVR Audio

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 10:27 am

Very nice work Dave!

IMHO L2 is still a nice single band limiter in 2016. Agree L3 more or less sucks. I did however generally like L-316. I was in the habit of using L-316 with slower attack times, which would retain some trasients followed by L2 to hard limit them for quite some time. That was/is a nice combination. But I guess this was more similar to multi-band compression followed by single band limiter do to longer attack times.

Been making a proper limiter myself the past couple weeks to put in our products like Kaleidoscope, and upon studying this stuff more deeply, from the development perspective, I completely agree that most of the magic in limiting happens with release times and specifically "auto-release". Very tricky topic.

Excited to check this out. Nice work as always! Great GUI also.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 2:55 pm

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camsr · Post by **camsr** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:06 pm

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:14 pm

BUG REPORT
Moving a band frequency across another active band (sometimes) crashes my DAW.
Pushing enter on a typed in value (in the last case it was the seperation) crashes DAW.

First impression,
Superiorly transparent to anything I've ever used. And it's incredibly simple to use for some whack-a-mole on peaks. Haven't been able to get deeper into it for the mentioned crash bug.

scintillator · Post by **scintillator** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:18 pm

@TheoM

So what analysis tools are you going to use for this? What standards are you going to apply? A basic requirement for any kind of test is objectivity - can you guarantee objectivity? Do you have the knowledge to conduct such a test? Who's going to take your results for serious, knowing your let's say strange personality and physical hearing defects? Are you doing this for yourself or for the community? Are you prepared to take in and consider any criticism, or are you going to turn straight to the mods and ask for the hypothetical person criticizing to be banned pronto?

Dave explicitly said that his is the best by far. It was designed for this after analyzing the deficiencies of any and all limiters on the market. How are you going to compare the performance of single band limiters vs multi band - are they comparable at all?

Tough questions off the top of my head.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:23 pm

scintillator wrote:How are you going to compare the performance of single band limiters vs multi band - are they comparable at all?

Good question. My opinion is no, they are not directly comparable. It's like comparing airplanes versus cars.

fisherKing · Post by **fisherKing** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:03 pm

TheoM wrote:i decided i am doing a once and for all shootout.

if anyone wants to contribute any "before files" that would be great, i have 10 here of my own I chose but I think going all the way here is a good idea.

I think limitless is going to win, and believe it or not from my tests so far after all the shit i gave it, the one knob hofa is coming up not bad

I am only testing dual platform limiters, and I don't have any demo time for L3 or L2, sorry. I mean i don't think they are at all relevant but they are the ones I can't test. There will be some demo beeps on some of the others. Since this is my new usb 3 test partition i get new demos on fabfilter stuff so I can re test pro-l for example.

So far i have installed Vlad Limiter 6, Pro-L, Ozone 7, Tb Pro Audio LAX Limiter, Elephant 4, Sonnox, xenon, LVC audio limited max, Invisible Limiter, T racks Stealth, barricade latest, t racks 3 master limiter, wavearts finalplug and of course Limitless

so please give any other suggestions now, I can only test on mac and think for fairness anyway they should only be dual platform and not daw specific limiters.

i am doing smashing tests, subtle tests, complete mixes, heavily processed drum loops, natural drums, single acoustic sounds, etc.

So far limitless is doing well in every category.. for me it's clearly in the top 3 limiter plugins of all time if not the best ever made.

I actually hope izotope respond because it's getting pretty handily thrashed overall.

I tested L3 around 6 months back and I just kept on laughing at it, that was my honest reaction, i actually classed it as probably the worst mastering limiter ever made, only equalled by the terrible sonalksis mastering limiter plugins (both single and multiband).

while nowhere near as extensive, my own humble tests were still interesting (mentioned in my earlier post). for the record, i tested limitless (since bought), pro-L, and elephant. i've been using pro-L a lot, but...for me, the best results came with elephant and limitless, and ultimately, the options and variables in limitless won me over. your mileage may vary...

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:17 pm

Now it seems DMG has created a nice suite of tools to cover mixing/mastering.

You got a do it all compressor, EQ, Gate, Limiter, stereo visualizer & De-Esser.

It's expensive but the quality is way up there IMO. I also like how all of the DMG products are designed first and foremost to be as transparent as possible.

Sure it's expensive, but if you owned all of the above for a completely professional transparent tool set, would you really need anything else?

I can't wait until i can afford all of these.

Congrats to DMG for releasing another monster.

ceemusic · Post by **ceemusic** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:51 pm

There's a discount for previous purchased products.
For me Limitless w/ intro was around $100.00.

That's not expensive when considering the quality of the product.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:53 pm

ceemusic wrote:There's a discount for previous purchased products.
For me Limitless w/ intro was around $100.00.

That's not expensive when considering the quality of the product.

I keep forgetting about this discount strategy. They also have a 50% discount for students which is incredible.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 2:58 am

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eytanmich123 · Post by **eytanmich123** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 6:51 am

TheoM wrote: So far i have installed

Vlad Limiter 6
Pro-L
Ozone 7
Tb Pro Audio LAX Limiter
Elephant 4
Sonnox
Xenon
LVC audio limited max
Invisible Limiter
T Racks Stealth
Barricade latest
T Racks 3 master limiter
Wavearts finalplug

and of course :
Limitless

Wow, had I done that (choosing s limiter), I think my music making would have been postponed til 2072

But I think that if you go to that great lengths, you have to test the above limiters with a pre-limiter clipper (you need WAY more options than the clipper that is on-board Limitless).
so test the following clippers with each of the above limiters :

Audjoo Hybris
GClip
KClip
Clipmax
ClipShifter
de-la Mancha Clipstar
Event Horizon Clipper mode
TSClip
SerpClip (and/or Limiter No6 clipper module)
Camel Audio CamelPhat
Voxengo Elephant Clip Mode

That way, by 2144 you'll have great, loud masters !!

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:52 pm

I also suggest adding Standard Clip by SIR Audio Tools and render it with the insane x256 oversampling and the steepest filter in linear phase mode (set to 93% or something). This setup can be pretty damn transparent as well unless you push it too far.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 1:01 pm

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kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 1:45 pm

scintillator wrote:@TheoM

So what analysis tools are you going to use for this? What standards are you going to apply? A basic requirement for any kind of test is objectivity - can you guarantee objectivity? Do you have the knowledge to conduct such a test? Who's going to take your results for serious, knowing your let's say strange personality and physical hearing defects? Are you doing this for yourself or for the community? Are you prepared to take in and consider any criticism, or are you going to turn straight to the mods and ask for the hypothetical person criticizing to be banned pronto?

Dave explicitly said that his is the best by far. It was designed for this after analyzing the deficiencies of any and all limiters on the market. How are you going to compare the performance of single band limiters vs multi band - are they comparable at all?

Tough questions off the top of my head.

Well i am extremely interested in his opinion exactly because he have hearing defect. My logic behind this is that he (i am assuming this) developed his one ear hearing to greater extent. And if he can pinpoint difference in one limiter vs another with one ear (and i am pretty sure he can) - then we people with both ears should do the same as well. So having just one ear in this test isn't exactly a drawback imho.

Also his different personality while it can look different at a times is exactly what is pushing him to do things in these tests - for which we others are really too lazy.

Add to that - most of the time i see that we share similar taste to plugins (i like Slate VMR but can't stand sound of Revival - i read he don't like it as well) so yes count me in i am interested.

Oh another one - i simply don't have all these plugins. Really why stopping him. Can't be bad for community. And i can assure you (regarding your question about knowledge in doing this) he does know his stuff. So things like different pan laws in projects, or some stupid human error is less likely to happen.

It's an opinion after all and imho it will be well worth it.

Give us your opinion man

New DMG Audio Limiter - Limitless!