Limiters and their uses

[Ithiriul]

Hey everyone I'm a little confused about when/why to use limiters.

As far as my knowledge goes, and please correct me if I'm wrong, they're used to keep signal from going over a certain threshold which makes them common on master faders.

I was watching the Foamo masterclass and he was putting a limiter on one of his synth tracks but he didn't really explain why. This made me wonder...are limiters also used to raise levels to a certain point and not just to keep them from exceeding a threshold?

I'm confuzzled

If anyone has any tips on when to use limiters or a little clarification on what exactly they do it'd be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[deadly_habit]

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/processing/limiter/

[Basic A]

This is hard to explain...

But, they recduce dynamic range without (generally) effecting harmonic or frequency content...

Ive never seen the masterclass your talking about, but without going into too much detail about something I dont know, Im assuming if he was putting a limiter on his synths it was because:

Maybe they had an opening filter which was creating TOO much dynamic motion, by filtering away enough sound volume levels were effected, and he wanted the harmonic change without the dynamics. Hed have thrown it on the sound, an brought the limiters ceiling down or raised its gain depnding on the situation, making these modulations only harmonic, not dynamic.

Maybe his melody being palyed with the synt contained elaborate chords followed by single notes? If I play a minor seventh chord (invoving 4 notes) these are going to compound and raise the dynamic volume higer then single notes would. So if I wanted to note through the cminor scale and then end with a minor seventh, I could put the limiter on to hold that seventh at te same dynamic as the notes.

maybe he had some plugin parameters to automate (say a chorus) which would cause an increase in dynamic volume when in action. He could have held this down with the limiter.


now.

These are all hypothetical situations and I have to stress to you that sometimes they will do more harm then good. Its up to you too find your own way.

But, though they are only a few in thousands of examples of when to creatively use limiting, I figured Id give you some ideas of how it might have een being used in the situation you mentioned, without knowing the video.

Experiment. You can also help gel and manipulate buses, much like compression.

Its a limitless process, limiting.

But.

Bottom line.

It reduces dynamic range by the amount you choose through a cieling.

[Sharmaji]

one scenario:

say you've got a synth sound-- like a unison square lead w/ chorus on it-- that sounds really rich and fat and has a lot of nice L-R stereo motion in it. you want this to be THE lead, the real center of the tune, that's extremely solid and beefy.

because synths are far more hi-fi than our ears are, chances are good that there's way more dynamic motion going on than you notice. You don't hear/feel things getting louder or quieter in a sustained note, but you see that the RMS of your signal is, say, a very respectable -18 but there are peaks that top out at +.4, -.02, etc. Or maybe you DO hear them, and don't like them, but you like the rest of the vibe of the sound.

boom: limiter time. strap on a limiter, set it so that the output is around -6 (easy middle-of-the-range value to deal with), and crank up the gain. take off 2, 3, 5, 10db... go until it feels like it loses the magic. then back off a bit.

you'll notice that it's far louder and consistent... and you may have lost some of the L-R motion (depending on how the limiter handles stereo signals).but you now have a much more known quantity of voltage to deal with-- you know that, when you bring in that element to the mix, you're adding x amount of volume that STAYS that x amount. some things (vocals, some percussion, etc) come to life with dynamics. some things, you barely notice if the dynamics are completely gone.

so basically-- pimp your mix.

scenario #2-- you've recorded live drums, and you want this big, bombastic sound but but the room mic's sound really thin...

[SunkLo]

Also after a compressor to tame the transients that get past the attack. If you're compressing a snare for example and want to reduce the dynamic range but keep a bit of snap, you'll set your attack accordingly and set the compressor so it's bringing the main punch down closer to the level of the decay of the snare. You then want to turn this up but the quick snap would cause clipping. Strap on a limiter to bring the transient down a bit so you can then turn the drum up for a nice meaty hit

[mattyseizure]

Ahhhh, so its like just keeping a cap on things? so would you use it whilst mastering? ive messed around with it trying to boost the volume up after i have done my mix. Is this correct? :S

[SunkLo]

Yes it is commonly used to increase volume. Try to get everything at the level you want in the mix first and use master limiting to bring it up just a bit.
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