Limiting

A limiter is not a fast compressor#

Many people think a limiter is just a compressor with a quicker attack. Apart from the fact that both apply gain reduction, which is literally one multiplication, a limiter has almost nothing to do with compression. How you compute that gain and how you apply it is completely different processing, and it is extremely difficult to get right.

I know because I tried. My first attempt at a mastering limiter did not sound good enough, so I abandoned it, and it took years of picking the project back up before it held its own against the limiters I had used on thousands of tracks.

Most limiters sound bad#

Many limiters are not good, paid ones included, and the free ones are mostly worse. The really good algorithms are proprietary and locked away, because they are valuable. I spent months trying to replicate one limiter I love and could not do it. So if you have tried the stock limiter in your DAW and decided you "don't like limiters", it may not be limiters you don't like, but that one. That is part of why some people end up preferring clippers.

The differences between the top limiters are real but they show mostly when you push them to absurd levels. If you back off to sane loudness, they become much smaller. And a limiter with powerful settings can destroy your track if you do not know how to use it. Used properly, with very gentle settings, even a free one can be amazing.

Heavy gain reduction is not a problem in itself#

A lot of gain reduction on the master limiter is not something that automatically needs fixing. I tested the popular advice of putting a clipper on every percussive track to take the load off the limiter. The limiter worked less, and the mix, loudness matched, sounded lethargic and lifeless with new harshness in the highs. A well-made mix with heavy limiting can sound better than one where the limiter has been "relieved". Music needs its transients.

The bass can be what makes a limiter fart#

The biggest single cause of limiter distortion is usually the low end. If you feed a limiter too much sub or low-frequency energy, it can get overwhelmed. My fix is not to back off the limiter, throw more compression at the mix, or turn the bass down, which relieves the distortion without solving it. I gently tame the lows with a single low multiband or dynamic-EQ band just before the limiter.

Output ceiling#

I keep a fixed 0.2 dB margin below full scale on the output of my true-peak limiter. I don't see the point of a blanket 1 dB ceiling: you have just thrown away a decibel of output level, so you push the limiter harder to get it back, and it distorts more.

That is not the same as padding the limiter on purpose. Lowering the ceiling further is standard professional practice for more dynamic masters and for vinyl files, and other formats may need other margins. The margin is a decision for the format, not a fixed value applied to everything.