difference Mdynamicslimiter and Multramaximizer

[manducator]

Hello,

Can someone explain the difference between the Mdynamicslimiter and Multramaximizer?

You can find zillions of explanations on the net about what a limiter does but when I do a search for maximizers, it all seems less obvious. Some even say a maximizer is the same as a limiter...

To me, they more or less do the same but are there specific situations when you use the maximizer and not the limiter or the other way around?

Basically I want to know why they are both in the totalbundle as they are very similar to me.

Is the difference in added harmonics?

Greetz,
manducator

[MeldaProduction]

Hi,

well, technically both at limiters and maximizers . Generally limiters were designed to remove peaks above the maximum our devices the "play" (in our case 0dB, or preferrably a little lower). Then people found that when pushed harder, it starts sounding better (at least temporarily), and the loudness war has begun . People started to make their recordings as loud as possible - maximize them. So some guy came up with a better title for promotion, a maximizer. The differences are arguable, to me they are the same.

MDynamicsLimiter is a single-band brickwall limiter (or maximizer if you wish). Personally I use this one. MUltraMaximizer is a special case of MMultiBandLimiter, hence this is again a brickwall limiter, but multiband. They both have very different sound and in my opinion the best way is to try both for the particular audio and check what sounds better.

The common wisdom says we use multiband limiters to gain more transparency, but it is not that simple and I believe multiband limiters are more transparent and less transparent at the same time. The problem is not the phase shifting cause by the crossover (and you can use linear-phase crossovers with out plugins anyway). The trouble is that when you push the limiter too high it is not pumping that much in overall spectrum as the single-band limiter would, but as separate bands are pumping, it may start pumping "all the time", because the more bands you have the higher probability some of them would be above the threshold at any given moment.
So my personal feeling about it is, that multiband limiters such as MUltraMaximizer provide less distortion at a cost of higher pumping.

At the end it all depends on your music style .

Cheers!

[manducator]

Thanks for the explanation.

You say that MultraMaximizer is multiband. As I can't see how to manipulate the different bands, it means it's a kind of a fixed multiband limiter?

Greetz,
manducator

[MeldaProduction]

Yes, that's correct.