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Limiters are the sexiest/coolest thing in a mastering chain. They are the one plugin that can have a big impact on how loud your final mixes can get. In this post, I’ll talk about a few plugins that I use in my mastering chain, which are my go-to plugins for achieving a specific sound.
Let’s dive right in.
No. 1
Pro L2
This is a classic limiter, my personal favorite, and probably the easiest limiter available in the market right now. This plugin is extremely transparent but can also be quite colored if you want it to be. This UI and the general layout of this plugin is extremely clean and straightforward.
The Limiter comes with a few tonal presets like “Modern”, “Transparent”. “Punchy”, “Allround”, these various modes decide how the plugin will limit and how it will approach the limiting process.
This limiter is also capable of TP limiting which can be enabled with a button at the bottom of the plugin.
You can set the Lookahead, attack, and release of the limiter to get the exact desired sound that you’re going for with the master.
No. 2
Limitless
This is another fabulous plugin from DMG Audio, this plugin is more like a multiband compressor and limiter all packed into one. In this limiter you can choose how you’d want the different bands of you Mix to react on the limiter, say you want to bring out the low end of the mix, you could choose to limit the mid-range or any other harsh frequencies and low mids more than the other frequencies in the spectrum and a natural M Curveish sound out of the limiter.
This plugin needs a lot of practice and tweaking to find out a setting that works for you.
No. 3
TDR GE Limiter
This has easily become one of my most favorite Mastering Limiters. This plugin has all the things you’d look for from a Mastering Compressor/Limiter. This plugin comes with various modules like the Compressor, which has 4 compression Modes and a Mix knob. An HF Limiter for some De-essing or HF compression is needed in the mix. A clipper can be used as a soft clip to drive up the mix and a Peak Limiter that will tame and limit your mix. The UI is also pretty simple and straightforward to use. This Limiter also comes with a handy LUFS meter which should now become a norm in all Limiting plugins.
No. 4
T-Racks Stealth Limiter
This is another cool Limiter from TRacks that I use often where I want the compression to be aggressive but not very apparent. This is by far the most transparent Limiter I have seen. This limiter also comes in 4 Modes that are Tight, balanced, Harmonic 1, and Harmonic 2. Each of these settings applies a very specific sound to your mix. It takes some tweaking to find out which setting works best for your mix. I would recommend this plugin for electronic music or music which requires a very specific sheen to it.
No. 5
Ozone 8 Limiter
Last but not least is the OZONE 9 Maximizer. This plugin is one of the least aggressive plugins out there in the market. I feel this plugin is not very malleable, but when used with the other plugins from the OZONE Suite you can get a lot out of this plugin.
Get in touch!
If you guys have another other questions you would like to shoot at me, just shoot me a mail at ronak@gray-spark.com.
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