Avid Pro Limiter - Overs & True Peak Limiting

[TrentWilliams]

I've been using Pro Limiter for a long time, it's on all of my templates and is generally my go-to.

But every once in a while I'll print a mix where Pro Limiter can't catch all peaks no matter what I do, I'm starting to think it's not actually a true peak limiter?

If I throw ISL2 in its place, I get no overs no matter how hard a push it.

Anyone out there have any insight or guidance on this?

[audiolex1]

Originally Posted by TrentWilliams

I've been using Pro Limiter for a long time, it's on all of my templates and is generally my go-to.

But every once in a while I'll print a mix where Pro Limiter can't catch all peaks no matter what I do, I'm starting to think it's not actually a true peak limiter?

If I throw ISL2 in its place, I get no overs no matter how hard a push it.

Anyone out there have any insight or guidance on this?

I found that the LUFS numbers on dynamic parts are about .3 hotter LUFS than all other Measuring software.
I sent AVID all the info and proof of it but don't know if they ever fixed it, but sounds like no.

Nugen and Youlean are really good for measuring. I'm sure any limiter will work. I used the McDSP for a while.

[nednednerb]

Originally Posted by TrentWilliams

I've been using Pro Limiter for a long time, it's on all of my templates and is generally my go-to.

But every once in a while I'll print a mix where Pro Limiter can't catch all peaks no matter what I do, I'm starting to think it's not actually a true peak limiter?

If I throw ISL2 in its place, I get no overs no matter how hard a push it.

Anyone out there have any insight or guidance on this?

Audio Engineering Society recommends we preserve the health of our hearing and suggest mastering music for streaming to:

-20 to -16 LUFS with transient peaks at about -9 or -8 dBFS.

Maxing up to 0.0 dBFS is old school, the wrong idea, and bad for ears, and there is a real understanding which has emerged that mixing at 0.0 dbFS and -14 LUFS is more likely to land one a loudness penalty.

Also, if a streaming service like Spotify or a distributor like DistroKid "maximizes" your audio, you will get a loudness reward if the peak gives headroom.

Therefore, if the loudness is -14 and that equals -14, why push everything so hot? Why not give headroom for the system? I think the "ears" do not really register much "impact" of micro and millisecond peaks in the -8 to 0.0 dBFS peak range, but they ARE more readily dangerous to electro-acoustic equipment.

The way -14 LUFS audio gets mastered to 0.0 dBFS peaks, there is not much dynamic room there to get it nicely mixed with other material in the future, like a soundtrack, or another "mixtape" or "album version."

If there was more headroom to begin with, "you can only go up from there."

My opinion is the 0.3 LUFS is meaningless if you turn down peaks to -9 dBFS, THEN get loudness where you like, without distortion. I bet it will sound better!

[JFreak]

Google for "intersample peaking" and you get a better idea about the phenomenon.

[mgoorevich]

Talking post production / multichannel I agree that Pro Limiter doesn't catch precisely all peaks. It seems to be somehow frequency dependent.
However it's a way more transparent than Nugen ISL 2.
ISL 2 performs the worst on acoustic piano loud parts where you can hear the difference compare to Pro Limiter.
Having said that the ISL2 might be good for some subtle gluing effect on e.g loud explosion scenes.

[TrentWilliams]

Originally Posted by nednednerb

Audio Engineering Society recommends we preserve the health of our hearing and suggest mastering music for streaming to:

-20 to -16 LUFS with transient peaks at about -9 or -8 dBFS.

Maxing up to 0.0 dBFS is old school, the wrong idea, and bad for ears, and there is a real understanding which has emerged that mixing at 0.0 dbFS and -14 LUFS is more likely to land one a loudness penalty.

Also, if a streaming service like Spotify or a distributor like DistroKid "maximizes" your audio, you will get a loudness reward if the peak gives headroom.

Therefore, if the loudness is -14 and that equals -14, why push everything so hot? Why not give headroom for the system? I think the "ears" do not really register much "impact" of micro and millisecond peaks in the -8 to 0.0 dBFS peak range, but they ARE more readily dangerous to electro-acoustic equipment.

The way -14 LUFS audio gets mastered to 0.0 dBFS peaks, there is not much dynamic room there to get it nicely mixed with other material in the future, like a soundtrack, or another "mixtape" or "album version."

If there was more headroom to begin with, "you can only go up from there."

My opinion is the 0.3 LUFS is meaningless if you turn down peaks to -9 dBFS, THEN get loudness where you like, without distortion. I bet it will sound better!

This is all coming from a post-prod TVC workflow where I'm working to OP.59 (-24LKFS -2TP) for TV deliverables and -18LKFS -3TP for streaming deliverables.

So nowhere near music loudness.

My Pro Limiter rant comes from -3TP where i'm getting -2.8TP when setting it to -3.

[henningaround]

I had the same problems with Elixir from FLUX.
I switched to Pro Limiter, but after a while to ISL2 because of the licensing model. I didn't want to keep up to date with Pro Tools Ultimate, which means I no longer use a Complete Plugin Bundle.
With ISL2, I set the threshold in all templates to -2.3 to make sure the -1 specs were met. Since then I've never had any problems, but I've also never tried to set ISL2 to the exact same threshold as in the specifications.
MGoorevich's comment about piano is interesting. I'll give that a try, but usually it's other elements like loud screams, bangs like gunshots and explosions etc that need to be caught by the limiter.

[Eric Lambert]

One of the only plugins I've found that truly grab every ISP is FabFilter's ProL2. The Weiss maximizer and TC's MD4 are my go-to for the master fader but they occasionally let ISPs pop through.

Also, there's a free plugin from Avid called MasterMeter which is great for telling you when you have overs.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

(...) TC's MD4 are my go-to for the master fader but they occasionally let ISPs pop through.

TC themselves say you need to put their brickwall limiter after.