[LAU] Limiters?

Ken Restivo ken at restivo.org
Mon Jul 11 05:07:39 UTC 2011


On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 09:00:03PM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 06:17:55PM +0200, Gabbe Nord wrote:
>  
> > I'm on a ardour 2.8.11-setup and I'm looking for the best possible limiter.
> > Rest of my plugin-use is linuxdsp and some calf, so I need a good limiter to
> > be able to crank it all up a notch compressionwise. I'm currently using TAP
> > Scalinglimiter, which is the best one I've found yet that dont give me
> > zippernoise etc, but I can't push that limiter as far as I want without
> > artifacts in the sound etc.
> > 
> > Do you guys have some tips? I'd be most grateful!
> 
> Every time I read a post like this (no offense intented to the
> poster), there is this desire creeping up my back to write a
> decent peak limiter, or just release the things I already have.
> 
> What stops me is the simple fact that by doing that I'd be
> contributing to the IMHO completely misguided and even stupid
> fashion of increasing the apparent loudness of recordings by
> any means, at the expense of sound quality. Simple fact is this:
> if it isn't loud enough, turn up the volume. The result will be
> vastly superior to what you can achieve by squeezing dynamics
> to death. 
> 

Well, yes, but you also wrote a great GPL auto-tuner, and apparently the prevailing fashion of the industry to auto-tune everything to death has neither slowed down nor accelerated.

Plugins don't kill music, people kill music.

I suppose someone could just as easily apply the bitcrusher LADSPA plugin to destroy any good mix too.

Really, having tools doesn't prevent people from misusing them. Those of us who don't fat-finger the tools, though, would like to have the best ones available on Linux.

So, if you feel like writing or posting a Fons-quality limiter, I think that'd be a great thing, and lots of us would appreciate it.


> Regarding ScalingLimiter, I wonder how many peope are actually
> aware of what it is doing. Which is to measure the peak level
> of segments delimited by zero crossings and then apply a 
> constant gain factor to each segment to adjust its peak level
> to close to the maximum. The idea seems to be that changing gain
> at a zero crossing doesn't introduce distortion. Which is wrong,
> it does generate gross amounts of intermodulation distortion,
> just having less HF energy than when switching gain at random
> points. This makes a complete joke of whatever follows in the
> reproduction chain - you could as well use the worst amplifier
> (in terms of IM distortion) you can find and things wouldn't 
> sound any different.
> 


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