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So I feel like I never properly learned some fundamental facts about mixing and limiters. I've read through the moneyshot thread (not all 62 pages, but a decent amount), and I didn't find anything that explicitly addressed these specific fundamental questions (which does not exactly surprise me because they are very specific).

So anyway, onto the questions:

1. I've always been under the impression that you should avoid limiters as much as possible. I usually have a limiter on most of my individual tracks and master, but I try to keep a balance between having the volumes as high as possible while reaching the limiter threshold as little as possible. Is this a worthwhile concern? Like, should I be worried about this? I've always thought limiting distorted the sound and you should only really have it there as a safety net for strong transients.

2. What is the point of keeping your levels low and then turning the gain up on the limiter(s)? Why do people do this? I've always thought that this would distort sound too (basically, I've thought that any form of gain reduction from a limiter distorted sound). Is there a fundamental difference between these two forms of gain reduction? Is one "safe" and the other "bad"?

3. I feel like I'm doing things totally wrong. I basically need limiters in all of my tracks AND my master. My input levels HAVE to be incredibly low in order to not pass 0db. For example, I have a basic idea for a dnb track going right now with only four tracks - drums, bassline, a stab/chordy type thing, and a pad-ish thing. These are the HIGHEST input levels I can possibly have without the master crossing 0db.

-drums: -15 db
-bass: -20 db
-stabs/chords: -6 db
-pad: -6 db

Is that not ridiculously low? And my individual drum samples have very low inputs as well (snare is at -18 db for example). Is this normal?

Well.....how does it sound?
are these levels peak or rms?

1. Using a limiter as a safety net sounds like something you would do for live music, not crafting a tune.
2. If there's no automatic gain combined with the threshold parameter, you would turn up the gain to get the limiter to start limiting the signal. Pushing it up to the threshold for it to squashed.
3. Is your creative goal to make music that is distorted and/or dynamically flat?

If it was RMS he'd be getting murdered. Still, taking a look at your RMS on a meter might give you some guidance.

You can dial in some compression or light limiting without it sounding as shitty as brickwall limiting. Upward compression or NY compression can squeeze up your average loudness without clobbering transients. All gain reduction is distortion by definition, but excessive abrupt application will always sound less musical than a lighter touch. Think of it like a girl's makeup. A bit can be nice but you don't want her looking like a clown. (this isn't juggaloforum.com)

badman wrote: -drums: -15 db
-bass: -20 db
-stabs/chords: -6 db
-pad: -6 db

that actually sounds pretty hot to me. I generally start a mix in rhythm-heavy material with the kick reading -12 to -15dB on my master and go from there; as sounds get bigger, you inevitably turn things down.

in digital audio you have 0db as a hard top-- things simply cannot get louder than that. There's no grey area, no tubes or transistors you can overload that start ringing and sounding cool-- it's a hard line.

on the other hand, at 24 bits and higher you can go down to almost inaudible before you hit a noise floor-- with tape and circuitry, you'd have like 30db of noise below your silence.

you've got the space-- keep the levels down.

re: limiters, practice with them and learn what they do, how they do it, and why you'd pick one over the other-- L1 vs. fairchild, etc, etc.

in modern mixes limiting is EXTREMELY common. A group i play in just got a unfinished mix back by one of the top dudes in the business-- literally an L1 on every channel. not doing much, maybe taking off 2db max-- but it rounds out the transients enough that the compressor after it works differently, and lets you get much more intensity with lower levels.

they're nothing more than tools, just learn how to use 'em.

SunkLo wrote:Think of it like a girl's makeup. A bit can be nice but you don't want her looking like a clown. (this isn't juggaloforum.com)

LOL

When im just composing and mixing roughly on laptop speakers (yeah i do it cause im lazy and my couch is comfy) ill run Ableton Limiter +3db gain into Waves UltraMaximizer at +3db on my master, light compression is on my bus channels. This usually just allows me to "hear" stuff. Ill then use my general/relative meter reading to dial in rougly where each element/bus needs to be.

My rules of thumb in my templates using my drums are this (dont swear by any hard fast db rule blah blah blah):
Drums -10db
Subbass -12/-13db
Midrange Bass/Wubs -16/-18db
Pads -20/-23db
Synth/leads -16/-18db
vocals -14db
efeccts -20-25db

Then when i actually go to mix the track down and im in my studio ill take off the limiters and run a naked master aiming for -6db RMS and fine tune everything to taste using my ears as the main guide. My ballparks just let me speed up my writing process since im using similar drum racks and bass patchs.

Inside my drum racks
snares 0db
claps 0db
kicks 0db
cymbals -6/-10db
hats -6/-10db

For me i try my best to not over use/abuse EQ, Compression or Limiters, they have a time and place in my workflow and produciton style but id rather get the source sounds and material as close to how i want it before i over process or try to fix things in an fx chain. Granted like everything in produciton i always let my ears be the final say on EVERYTHING.

ok. so I guess my levels arent that bad.

so anyway, the fundamental question I am asking here is this: should I avoid limiters whenever possible? not that I want to be lazy or whatever, but I spend A LOT of time adjusting levels to keep them under 0db, and I am willing to keep putting in that time because that's what I've always done, but if it isn't all that necessary, is it ok to just slap a limiter on my tracks if it's reducing the gain significantly?

thanks for the responses

Just wondering if anybody else on this forum has exported a tune without worrying about peak levels and then just normalized it after exporting it, like in audacity?

badman wrote:ok. so I guess my levels arent that bad.

so anyway, the fundamental question I am asking here is this: should I avoid limiters whenever possible? not that I want to be lazy or whatever, but I spend A LOT of time adjusting levels to keep them under 0db, and I am willing to keep putting in that time because that's what I've always done, but if it isn't all that necessary, is it ok to just slap a limiter on my tracks if it's reducing the gain significantly?

thanks for the responses

I'd say, in my opinion, using a limiter to avoid having to set levels is the wrong approach. That's like painting a whole picture in with the same color because you don't feel like mixing up the right shade of paint. If you wanna throw a limiter on your master temporarily while you're getting a rough feel for how things will sit, that's perfectly fine. But you don't want to be applying anything to the final mix that isn't deliberate. Use limiting as a tool to reign in parts that are too dynamic or too sharp.

If you're only concerned about not going over 0dB on the 2buss, just select all your tracks and pull down the faders to -16 at the start of your project. Now you've got lots of headroom; turn your volume up to compensate and you're good to go. You can also use gain trim plugins instead of tying up your faders so you retain resolution at the top of the fader throw. Or if your DAW allows, set up a project template. There's many other good reasons to do this and it'll save you a fair bit of time. Gain trims on all the tracks, some color coded busses for routing, and some metering on the master track. Might as well do all that shit once instead of every project.

To answer your first question, you should avoid limiters whenever they're unnecessary.

Limiters are awesome, but work on your mix levels first. , and compression.

It's all about Pro-L, baby. Nothing can compare.