When you love a LIMITER

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Recycled_Brains
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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Aug 07, 2018 11:23 am

Why not just replace those hits with another from somewhere else in the song? That's my approach. Super simple, works every time, costs zero dollars. A limiter or volume automation doesn't change the impact of the hit and those rogues smashes rarely sound good to me. Who knew you could hit a drum so hard that it sounds like shit? haha.

EDIT: Far as limiters go... I have the Massey L2007. I only use it to make reference mixes hotter so clients aren't like "this is so quiet, what's that about?" Most GR I ever do is like 1-2 db. Stays unobtrusive in that range. Anytime I try to be more heavy handed with it, it just makes me nervous.
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A.David.MacKinnon
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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Tue Aug 07, 2018 12:55 pm

Recycled_Brains wrote:
Tue Aug 07, 2018 11:23 am

EDIT: Far as limiters go... I have the Massey L2007. I only use it to make reference mixes hotter so clients aren't like "this is so quiet, what's that about?" Most GR I ever do is like 1-2 db. Stays unobtrusive in that range. Anytime I try to be more heavy handed with it, it just makes me nervous.
I love the L2007. I use it pretty much exactly as you describe. I'd guess it could work for this application but it's stereo only.

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I'm Painting Again
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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by I'm Painting Again » Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:26 am

I use two actual limiters - a software L1 clone and an orban 418a

the former for just making a sub group louder "transparently" and the other as a tone shaping thing for just about anything - smashy or subtle it really does impart a nice tone

never use them to lower a stray hit though

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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by losthighway » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:06 pm

So while I meant to start a general conversation about using limiters (which I totally got, thanks) some folks were interested in my mixing situation that got me thinking about them.

For the record I was able to tame the uneven kick (turned out to be a lot more than 4-5 weird hits to automate or replace) by doing some heavy reduction with my Chandler LTDII (kind of like a Neve 33609), into the Symetrix 501's limiter to lop 3-4 db to lop off only the harder hits.

Put that in parallel with the original track, and the untouched outside the kick FET sound. Worked wonders. Still some musicality with variation, no longer the jarring treble smacks. Looking at the wave form it's a lot more consistent, but still some variety in the dynamic range. I'm not sure the limiter was instrumental in the success here (the Chandler did way more of the work), but it didn't hurt.

I'm reminded of the studio we all went to around town in the late 90's, who insisted you couldn't properly record loud rock without a triggered bass drum sound because a real kick was "too inconsistent". SCOFF! I say!

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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by floid » Thu Aug 09, 2018 7:14 am

losthighway wrote:
Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:06 pm
I'm reminded of the studio we all went to around town in the late 90's, who insisted you couldn't properly record loud rock without a triggered bass drum sound because a real kick was "too inconsistent". SCOFF! I say!
Lol and a few short years later those kick sounds felt relentless and mechanical. Which is fine if you're going for that.

I've come to recognize I get the lead foot as a way of counting off measures and transitions. It can lead to some scary looking waveforms but honestly a lot of times it sounds fine in context.
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losthighway
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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by losthighway » Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:11 pm

^ Totally.

A lot of amazing drummers hit the kick drum extra hard for the part where it works. Intention is key, and dynamics are lovely.

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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:39 am

and some less-than-amazing drummers hit the kick REALLY SUPER EXTRA HARD on the last beat of the song. it always cracks me up. it's like they want to make sure everyone knows This Is The Last One.

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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by drumsound » Fri Aug 10, 2018 3:52 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:39 am
and some less-than-amazing drummers hit the kick REALLY SUPER EXTRA HARD on the last beat of the song. it always cracks me up. it's like they want to make sure everyone knows This Is The Last One.
I may or may not be guilty of that when playing certain gigs...

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Re: When you love a LIMITER

Post by GeorgeToledo » Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:18 am

If I’m mixing and have a moderate 2:1 ~ 4:1 compression on a given track, sometimes there might be something a little aberrant that pops out in a few places on a track, and hits the more moderate compression maybe a little too hard. The tone of some compressors can sort of shift when getting further and further past threshold.

So, I might limit just a couple to few dB ahead of the more moderate compression in that case. It would be setup only to pass threshold on the hottest spikes. Splitting up duties.

Sometimes there are certain signature type of sounds that involve limiting, like a very heavily limited clean guitar amp or DI, certain piano and electric keyboard sounds, cranked room mics.

I used to often limit the stereo bus years back, but I have found I don’t like doing that on a mix. I’ll use a stereo bus compressor, and group bus compressors, but usually at low ratios. And if you do want to slam a given bus, you can still keep things light on others.

Sometimes after a mix, I might do a light pass with PSP Xenon limiter while using Waves WLM, to get things tucked in for projects that aren’t going to be outside mastered; some things of my own, or the lowest budget things I do for others. Always good to send something to be outside mastered though (by true accomplished MEs).

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