Superhuge ISP

[nowaysj]

Hey, just dropped ff's pro*L on my master to check my squashed mix, and I'm getting 5.0 db isp's... I usually will pull like .1 or .2, but NEVER 5.0's like this. I'm looking at about 4 or 5 db of gain reduction here, with an rms ~ -10db (no bass in mix, just kicks).

So what gives, why is this mix causing such huge isp's?

[SunkLo]

That's pretty fucky. Are you using any effects that upsample or downsample? Or cheap waveshapers/harmonic exciters or anything that might have generated high frequency content? Try soloing tracks, and comparing their level with the amount of peak reduction Pro L sees. You'll probably have to adjust the limiter threshold or hit the master hotter to get the limiter to trigger. Or there's also some ISP meters that might be easier than using Pro L to find the source of the problem.

You could also try putting a filter before the limiter. It could be a plugin that's adding a lot of frequencies over Nyquist and didn't filter them out properly, leaving you with a lot of HF content that you can't hear eating up headroom.