How do you use limiters? + how do you process your tunes loud

J

JungleFever

Member
VIP Junglist
Joined
Apr 11, 2008
Location
kent
I use fruity and I know limiting is important for mixdowns and making it loud without distorting the sound. but how do you do it? do you just play with it till it sounds better? any help would be appreciated
 
JungleFever said:
I use fruity and I know limiting is important for mixdowns and making it loud without distorting the sound. but how do you do it? do you just play with it till it sounds better? any help would be appreciated
Click to expand...

Basically you'll just be making the sound louder, while making sure to top of the louder noise peaks so they don't distort. (as you said) I found that a lot of it is just playing around with it. The amount of tweaking you'll have to do might differ with which plugin you are using to do so and the quality of your mixdown. You should check out iZotope ozone 5, if you put it on your master and just select the d&b preset and tweak it a little, it does wonders without having to put too much time in it :)
 
When I use a limiter I just leave its gain at 0 but push up the volume of my channels if needed
 
JungleFever said:
I use fruity and I know limiting is important for mixdowns and making it loud without distorting the sound. but how do you do it? do you just play with it till it sounds better? any help would be appreciated
Click to expand...

limiters are not important at the mixdown stage of your tunes and whacking a limiter on the output and hoping for the best isn't going to do you any favours. a good, strong 'loud' mixdown comes from good use of panning your tracks in the stereo field, a good relationship between the RMS and Peak meters and most importantly, dynamics.

you could 'turn everything up to 11' in your track, and it would be theoretically loud, but not providing a contrast between quiet and loud in your track wont do you any favours. a common trick is making a tunes intro quieter than the first drop. the difference between the two, no matter how subtle, will in essence 'trick the ears' into thinking that the song as a whole is louder than it is by providing a dynamic contrast.

in essence, a good solid mixdown in the hands of a good Mastering Engineer (for example Beau at Masterpiece) will provide a 'louder' track that holds its own in a mix in comparison to a track with a shit mixdown and a limiter slapped on the output.

if you want to improve your mixdowns then i suggest you buy The Mixing Engineers Handbook by Bobby Owsinski, it is full of tips and tricks for mixdowns straight from some of the most respected and talented mixing engineers ever, also the Gearslutz forum is by far better when it comes to these sorts of things in comparison to what gets posted on this forum.
 
JungleFever said:
kl ye nice one for the comment il check that plugin out as well :)
Click to expand...

and you don't need to be buying more plugins, presets or whatever.

just spend a lot of time learning the art of Mixdowns.

download the Multitracks of famous songs you know (easily found with a google search) and try mixing them down. critically listen to your results in comparison to the released version, and then try again. practice makes perfect.
 
spyre said:
When I use a limiter I just leave its gain at 0 but push up the volume of my channels if needed
Click to expand...


1bgw.jpg
 
On the tune I did today I was dealing with this issue. and what I do is use a warmer plugin on the drum bus and then a limiter with a boost on the drum bus.

light compression on some things that might peak, and maybe if something has a lot of range of volume ill use a limiter but only a little bit and its the top of the line fabfilter
 
usually what I do is set a limiter on the master and make sure its squashing to at least 10. now this only to get a reference on what its gonna sound like when its mastered. sounds change when theyre limited so this is for reference only. once it sounds good both limited and unlimited I turn the limiter off. i always bounce down and then master with a chain of plugins for more control(soundforge). mixing takes a lot of practice, and limiters really aren't that useful for me except for what i mentioned above.
 
dirty breaks said:
and you don't need to be buying more plugins, presets or whatever.

just spend a lot of time learning the art of Mixdowns.

download the Multitracks of famous songs you know (easily found with a google search) and try mixing them down. critically listen to your results in comparison to the released version, and then try again. practice makes perfect.
Click to expand...

This is the most useful advice within this thread IMO.
 
on what exactly? whole mix? drums? instruments?

different for everything imo...but then, my whole mix would go straight to master for someone else to worry about brickwalling it until it sounds the same on ipod headphones as it does at the NEC. :p
 
Back
Top Bottom