My mastering engineer recommended I limit. You guys doing this?

[if6was9]

My mastering engineer has beeen at me for the last few mixes I've been doing to check my bounced down stereo file and to find the peaks and limit the tracks causing them so he can get some more headroom.

Basically, if there's a few peaks in my mix that are 1 Db higher than the rest of the peaks, to find that snare hit/cymbal hit/kick hit etc... thats causing it and put a limiter on whatever channel it was to stop the peak so he can squeeze more out of the mix. He does a lot of clipping from what I can tell so this allows him to push his mix harder without those odd hits causing audible distortion.

Makes sense to me, and normally I've been using automation for this kind of thing but usually when I'm mixing I used to be happy as long as it sounded good and wasn't clipping.

Are you guys doing this? Any recommendations for a cheap/free limiter with a good gui showing gain reduction, I use w1 but it's hard to see when it's working and in this case I only want to use it on those odd peaks and have it doing absolutely nthing the rest of the time.

 

[Morgan C]

Why can he not put a limiter on the tracks himself..? This really seems like something he should be doing.

 

[if6was9]

If you read again I mean limit the indivdual channels in the DAW when mixing to maximise headroom, by shaving off the odd largest peak at that stage he can drive the mixes harder into his converters without distortion.

I've now edited the OP to hopefully make it clear what I mean.

 

[Morgan C]

Ah ok, that makes more sense. I'd imagine most of the spikes would be coming from the drums, and if you're sample replacing the spikes are gonna be pretty consistent anyway. You could perhaps chuck a limiter or clipper on the snare bus? I do this occasionally using GClip or Voxengo Elephant. If you're using a lot of compression or transient designing on the snare, it can help to tame the spikes a bit before it hits the drum bus compressor, otherwise that compressor will be reacting only to the snare drum.

I've heard of people - when using natural drums - put a limiter quite early on in the chain to tame any spikes before they hit the compressors, transient designers, gates, etc. Another alternative would be to send your mastering engineer stems instead of the single stereo bounce.

 

[zvish]

what type of analyzing tool shows best "uncontrolled" peaks in his (your ME) opinion? Because I cant see nothing special on normal spectrum analyzer;p hehe

 

[Uros]

For this purpose use clipper to shave off those rare big spikes (yeah, much less rare on mostly natural drums), it should end up sounding completely transparent. GClip is certainly up to the task. Or yeah, send him the stems, seeing that your ME likes to clip things already.

 

[if6was9]

You don't use an analyser to find them. Simply load the unmastered bounced out file into your daw and look at it in the normal view. You can see if there are any peaks larger than the rest, listen to that section you can hear whats causing the peak- usually a snare, kick or cymbal hit. It's not hard, complicated or time consuming. I just found it interesting and a slightly different view on things.

Clipping the snare is a bit different- it'll help with taming peaks but you set the limiter so that it only works on the 4-5 loudest hits in the entire song on that particular track. The clipper works all the time affecting the sound, the limiter on works on a few hits

 

[if6was9]

I already use a clipper on my snare and sometimes drum bus. This is different

 

[Uros]

Are you sure that clipper is working all the time? On GClip there's that sort of visually represented threshold, so it only chops off peaks above that threshold line. Or am I wrong?
Yeah, you can sure use limiter for this task too, I've heard people doing it to gain a bit more headroom for mix squishing. I am sure that top mixers do it in one way or another (using limiters, automation, etc.), because they sure need it, especially nowadays, with the loudness war and all.

 

[mva801]

The clipper is going to work as much as you set it to work. Its functions are similar to a limiter, in that you set a threshold. If something goes over it, it gets clipped. If not, it goes through.

I already do this on my individual tracks. I'll set a limiter or T-racks clipper on my drum buss, shaving off a db or two on the big peaks, and I'll do the same thing with a limiter on the vocal/ guitar chain. Don't overdo it - just enough to push those big peaks down in line closer with the rest. Nowadays in the digital world this goes a long way.

Also a bit of tape saturation can help even out some peaks. Back in the day when everything was done to tape, the natural tape compression helped even things out.

 

[Nimvi]

I don't quite get why the ME doesn't just use a limiter/clipper as first thing on his chain, set for just these few peaks.

Maybe I'm understanding something wrong, but in my logic, if I'm going to chop off a giant's head, it doesn't matter if he is surrounded by a crowd or not. I'm still only going to hit his head, because it's the only thing sticking out that far. Bonus is that it makes me look cool to the crowd...

In any case, my sword would be called gclip (very easy to see if you are only hitting that rare peak or more, since you can see the original waveform while setting the threshold on it). As far as I know, it doesn't do anything to the signal as long as it isn't passing the threshold. Good luck!