Ah yes thank you for pointing that out. I researched a bit of what you were saying, and found a similar post on kvr where some guy blew his speakers from a feedback loop in cubase.Artie Fufkin wrote:whether or not you're using a limiter, isn't it still going to be the same rms, just different frequencies? your speakers won't be doing any less work. if you're fully clipping in digital, it won't get any louder.
You could use something that mutes or lowers the level if it goes over a threshold, like the opposite of a gate. I forgot what the name for that is because it's built into the gate in renoise. It would be so you're hearing what the gate is filtering out instead.
Someone responded saying...
"it doesn't matter if it hit +6dB or +100dB; the values IIRC are from the 32 bit float engine. Anything above 0dBFS on the meter when it's mixed down to the selected bit you have Cubase set to (44.1Khz, 16 bit, for example) never goes any higher than 0dB because it can't. Cubase internal isn't analog. If it was, then yes, I'd agree that hitting +100dB would be louder than 0dB. This is digital; the laws of 0dBFS is absolute. You now just get digital noise, and nothing more when you clip the meter. It isn't 'louder' digital noise when the meter clips at +12dB, vs. +3dB, it's just noise. Now, if the speakers can tolerate digital noise when it's cranked all the way up, I think you have your answer. It's not like the amp and speakers were specifically tailored to handle all circumstances."
So it sounds like the only good a limiter would do is preventing the digital noise that occurs when clipping the master output, but you are correct in saying the output would still be 0db. I know some DAW's have the option of automatically muting the master output when it exceeds a set db level, which may be useful for some.
