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Best limiters/'louderners'

E

Eptesicus

Senior Member
Hi,

Looking to buy some really good plug ins to give my tracks some extra volume and i remember at University we had the Sonnox Oxford stuff which i thought was really good. Having listened back to the stuff I mastered in the studio there, I managed to get some really good results using what i think was the Sonnox inflator, limiter etc.

I am therefore thinking about getting the enhance bundle from Sonnox whilst it is 50% in the November sale.

I have tried some cheap things, but they all have some sort of shortcoming or distort very easily etc and i really like the sound of the tracks i mastered back in University so that is why i am thinking about the Sonnox range

However, i wanted to check if there is anything better for the money in terms of giving a pretty decent level of volume increase without too much tweaking and without excessive distortion/compression.

the enhance bundle (transmod,inflator and limiter) is about £190 inc VAT in the UK at the moment.

Cheers
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Ozone 8 is good.

My favorite would be Fabfilter mastering bundle but it's rather pricey. You could perhaps settle for less and just get Pro-L and Saturn or Pro-C2.
 
Thanks. Just tried to use the demo's for Sonnox to help make up my mind but they use pace/ilok...fine i thought, except i only have an ilok1 and it requires an ilok2. ****
 
No i don't have UAD unfortunately. Balls, was looking forward to trying it out. Shame it would mean shelling out an extra £40 for a new ilok if i wanted it as well : /
 
Just some of my personal likes, but this also comes with the footnote that I usually wouldn’t try to maximize loudness on orchestral work. Maybe on sections for trailer stuff - percussion specfically...
  • Waves L-316 - Easy to muck up the sound if you don’t know what you are doing. Beautiful and untouchable when you do.
  • Waves L3 LL- colors the sound a bit, but does a great job when you know how to work it. Charlie Clouser wrote a few informative posts about it some time back.
  • IK Stealth Limiter - It just gets things loud... transparently.
  • Waves L1 - if the intent is just catching 1-2db, this is my go to.
Contrary to the popular opinion, I’ve never really liked iZotope limiters/exciters... they all have “the izotope sound” which is something I do not personally like. For example, I try really hard to like Neutron, but if I start with it, I usually end up replacing it with something else down the road. I want it to work... I really do. Others seem to like the iZotope sound though.
 
The list of good ones is pretty long. In addition to those already mentioned (in alphabetical order):

Brainworx bx_xl V2
DMG Audio Limitless
TDR Limiter 6 GE
Voxengo Elephant

Not to mention limiters that also add coloration, such as Slate Digital FG-X.
 
Yes, too many good choices these days. I've had great results with bx_XL V2 for mastering very loud metal tracks without quality loss or distortion.
 
As a single band neutral limiter, izotope's Ozone maximiser is my favorite. (usually IV algorithm, sometimes also the III; True Peak on)
As single band limiter with coloration it's Ozone's Vintage Limiter (which is perfect on instruments).
And then there is the mentioned Elevate (newfangled Audio), which is a fantastic multiband limiter with lots of extras.

When using Elevate on the master bus, it's still followed by Ozone.
 
For me it's:

- Waves L3-LL MultiMaximizer on stem sub masters. Five frequency bands, very low latency allows you to leave it on all the time, even while recording new stuff, and it can do massive amounts of "louder-izing" while still sounding pretty invisible.

- Ozone's Maximizer. This thing is magic. Inter-sample peak detection / correction, and the Transient Recovery thing can really help avoid squashing the peaky stuff. But the more sophisticated algorithms like IRC IV add a bit of latency that may be too much if you're trying to sequence percussion or spiccato strings. I generally only use this when doing after-the-fact mastering of finished stereo mixes.

- Elevate from Newfangled / Eventide. I just got this, so I haven't really used it on an active project, but it seems to be an absolute monster. As many frequency bands as you want and a simple interface for what appears to be a pretty sophisticated engine - and the price is right. I will be giving this some serious consideration as a stem sub master limiter.
 
+1 for Pro-L

I also use PSP Xenon and generally alternate between them depending on material, wonderful all-round limiters. I own Ozone 7 but just rarely seem to use it over the other two.
 
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