Tested out the effects of limiting

[ahjteam]

Alright, I noticed when I was doing the My Heart Will Go On cover, I noticed that FUUUUUUU, I can't actually get the mix louder than -8dB RMS with Waves L2, so I talked to Jeff about it just a moment ago and tested it out how it behaves. I noticed that it actually doesn't do hard clipping that allows the mix to be actually louder; It smoothens out at first and then it didn't do anything.

The first clip is the original 50hz sine wave that I used, then is L2 with threshold at -30 and then is the compressor in Goldwave with 60:1 ratio

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/sine_limiter.wav

 

[Omega_Void]

Nice to see what's actually going on

Looks like L2 responds to the initial transient by very soft-knee clipping then limits (turns the input down so clipping doesn't occur at all).

Would be interesting to see what it looks like with more dynamic material, perhaps if you reduce the input wave's level then normalise one peak in the middle...?

Might be worth trying different frequency input also, a sophistcated algorythm might have different behaviour at different frequencies...

But what's most obvious here is just how badly the sound gets reshaped from trying to get things louder.

I guess L2 tries to nanny the user out of smushing things too badly -- once you're going too far it stops actually getting the mix louder, so there's no point turning the gain up beyond that point...