Limiter Settings in a Master Fader

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi all,
Last night I was burning a few CDs to try out some mixes on my living room stereo, which is a more high-end setup than my mixign environment. (Wish this wasn't the case...)

Anyway, my Master Fader includes a Digi Rack Limiter, followed by a Dither. I used the Limiter to boost the overall level of the mix by about 3dB, to get the mix just up into the yellow, but I didn't touch any of the other settings.

I'm curious whether any of the more experienced folks out there have an suggestions for the best settings on this plug in for this application.

Also, any reason that the order (Limiter first, Dither second) should be reversed?

Thanks,
Mark

[pk_hat]

Mark,

dithering should always be the last link in the chain.
As for settings on the master fader, DaBasstard had posted his prefered plugin-chain setup a while back. A search might yield his post, I'm not sure what thread it was under, though.

pk

[Mark_Knecht]

PK,
Thanks for the pointer. Went and found it, and it is helpful. However, it doesn't answer my exact question as he's using stuff I would have to pay for.

Dithering is last in his chain, which makes sense. I see others are doing what I had been doing, which is bouncing as a 24-bit file, then using another program, I use Sound Forge, to go to 16-bit.

Anyway, I'm curious about these different limiters and what sort of timing people use on them. I assume I can just push the gain as I need to, to get my track up close to -3dB or so, but I'm not clear what 'good' attack and release times are...

As always, thanks for your help. You always manage to point me in an interesting direction.

Mark

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
I did see that QuikDraw had posted some numbers awhile back:

Threshold: -4dB
Gain: As required I suppose
Attack: .1mS
Release 10mS

His application was a bit different in that post.

On the Mac side there have been a few threads about mastering, and some interesting pointers to outside web pages, but so far no discussion about why to set attach and release values a particular way.

Mark

[Mr_Seven]

Here's an idea. Get another computer and outfit it with only the mastering software of your choice. Sound Forge with Waves, T-Racks (my choice), etc. Connect this computer to your wonderful Mastering enviroment and you've got it made.