# Mixing orchestral music with limiter on master bus.



## Dracarys (Sep 8, 2012)

A limiter with no gain reduction so there's no degradation in quality or loss of dynamic range. Is this normal? I find mixing samples accordingly to which ever limiter can sometimes have good results. Anyone else doing this?

Thanks!


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## MacQ (Sep 8, 2012)

If there's no gain reduction, it's not doing any limiting, so ... I guess so? Personally, I'll slam the master bus or any particular instrument or group with as much compression and limiting as is necessary to get it sitting properly. It's like there's some kind of unwritten code that says you shouldn't mix orchestras with anything other than the gentlest of EQ. I disagree with that premise. "Real" isn't always best.

Don't be afraid -- you won't break it!


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## ozmorphasis (Sep 8, 2012)

totally depends on the aesthetics your after. A typical modern hybrid score's use of orchestra is often like just another color within a rock band's studio arsenal - totally mixed, totally produced sounding. 

That's very different than a classical approach, where for the sake of preserving certain subtleties of dynamics and balance between the instruments, even the very loudest climaxes only barely reach peak on the meters....which means that the rest is very hard to hear against the sound of your engine noise while driving and listening. Of course, I picked two extremes. There are many shades in between. 

You won't break the equipment, but depending on what you are after, you can break the balance and it goes without saying that to whatever extent you are using limiting at all, by definition you are breaking the dynamic range...which is not always a bad thing.


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## chimuelo (Sep 8, 2012)

You should read up on Sidechaining w/ Compressors, using an expander versus raising the channels, and FET + Electro Optical Limiting.
For years I tried using my hardware knowledge to virtual mixing, but it helped understanding processing, but didn't actually apply to virtual mixing as much as I thought it would.

Different forms of synthesis and applying it to vitrual synthesis works great, but with ITB mixing there are just too many options that hardware couldn't do that makes it challenging.

Brave new world, and there are no rules or formulas as there are just too many variables.


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## Dan Mott (Sep 9, 2012)

I have a limiter on my master to prevent loud bursts of sound that can happen with certain libraries.


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## KEnK (Sep 9, 2012)

Personally I enjoy a wide dynamic arc.

For Arts sake I'm hesitant to remove dynamics.

But lately, when it comes to film cues, 
I'm think it might be better to mush it much more than I do.

As the level approaches a flat line, it's easier for the editor to work with,
and may very well mean more of your music is in the mix.

k


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## dannthr (Sep 9, 2012)

A limiter is standard operating procedure, if for no other reason than to protect your hardware.

You can have a limiter on and not be limiting if your audio is not hitting the threshold, nothing is lost by putting the limiter on and having the threshold be unity.

Mine also has a really nice ditherer, so I can reshape down to 16-bit for export.

Cheers,
- Dan


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## Kejero (Sep 21, 2012)

Dan-Jay @ Sun Sep 09 said:


> I have a limiter on my master to prevent loud bursts of sound that can happen with certain libraries.



Same here. It still scares the shit out of me when it happens, but at least my monitors are still alive


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## Waywyn (Sep 21, 2012)

Good mastering and limiting is as essential as good arrangement, good idea and good mixing. I mean if you are not mastering your tracks at all, of course it is your choice and fine, but I find if there are too hard jumps in dynamics going on it is very difficult to listen to. I enjoy a lot of classical music but I get freaked out if you are sitting in the car and you have to crank up the speakers in order to follow the pp parts and then my eardrums almost explode when it gets back to a powerful ff ...

To crank it all up and constantly fire on your listeners eardrums is not a good thing, but making it complicated to listen to your music because of all the extreme jumps it is not better.

Besides that there simply is no degradation of the audio material going on, by simply moving a threshold and make sure to prevent some peaks from clipping. Noone forces you to crank up the threshold and hopelessly distort your track 

Always remember you already degraded your instruments of choice because you used samples. It can't get any lower than that!!

I would just check out some Voxengo or Waves stuff and other companies. Fool around a bit and convince yourself if the quality gets so much worse when slightly adjusting the volume and bring it to a decent standard level.

On accident my next tutorial will be about mastering basics. I am uploading right now!


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## José Herring (Sep 21, 2012)

Waywyn is right. Putting some sort of mastering chain on the master buss is the secret sauce turning regular tracks into pro tracks. Took me years to figure it out.

Alan Meyerson mentions this chain on his master buss(es) a) Massive Passive, Manley Slam, and a touch of Waves L1 Ultramaximizer.

What you don't want, mostly because it sounds really cheezy, is a limiter doing a lot of heavy lifting. So a combination of light 2db compression with 2 or 3 db makeup and brickwall limiting with 2 or 3 db boost works well. Also sculpting the sound with some EQ on the master buss.

Use to be a no-no, now everybody is doing it these days. Also, use to be a no-no to mix into the chain, but I haven't found any other effective way to do it. If you mix without it on, then what happens is that when you turn it all on, your mix goes to Shite and you have to remix everything anyway.


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## mark812 (Sep 22, 2012)

josejherring @ Fri Sep 21 said:


> Alan Meyerson mentions this chain on his master buss(es) a) Massive Passive, Manley Slam, and a touch of Waves L1 Ultramaximizer.



He also uses Inflator.


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## José Herring (Sep 22, 2012)

mark812 @ Sat Sep 22 said:


> josejherring @ Fri Sep 21 said:
> 
> 
> > Alan Meyerson mentions this chain on his master buss(es) a) Massive Passive, Manley Slam, and a touch of Waves L1 Ultramaximizer.
> ...



Not sure how much they're using Inflator these days. I think it was kind of a fad.

Also, I meant to say Manley Vari-Mu rather than Manley Slam. I get them confused sometimes.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 22, 2012)

Casalena, if the limiter isn't doing any gain reduction, what are you using it for?

It doesn't have to degrade the signal. The reason to use a limiter is that it catches transients, allowing you to set the mix level - a creative decision - where you want it, rather than having it dictated by the loudest transients at arbitrary places in the piece. You can slam things into limiters as a color, but that's a special case; if you want a loud mix and you don't want to hear the limiter, then you just raise the gain until you do hear it and back off until you don't.

Also, as a practical matter there's a difference between a compressor and a limiter (beyond the official definition of anything greater than a 10:1 compression ratio being called limiting). Usually compression is either a color and/or you're using it to add density, while limiting is more for getting the level right. That's why Alan Meyerson would use three different gain toys - and I'm guessing why you asked the question in the first place.

Jose, I put a compressor on the bus when I'm ready to start fine-tuning. I don't like to start with it.


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## José Herring (Sep 22, 2012)

Good way to do it Nick. I was thinking of something similar, because I do a lot of sound design sometimes and the last think I want is to have everything going trough the chain when I'm trying to do sound design.


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## John Rodd (Sep 23, 2012)

Casalena @ Sat Sep 08 said:


> A limiter with no gain reduction so there's no degradation in quality or loss of dynamic range. Is this normal? ....



If you aren't doing any gain reduction with your limiter... then you really are not doing anything..... so in this case, I would not call this normal.

and...

the problem with having a limiter on your mix is.... generally speaking it will just make things louder.... and the ear prefers the louder thing.... but it is very easy for a person who is an inexperienced mixer to not catch a limiter that is doing bad things to a mix..... so one can produce some bad results quickly and not even know it.....

and...

in my experience, many plugin limiters sound quite bad.

My 2 favorite limiters would be the Massey L2007 (ProTools only, sorry) and my TC Electronic System 6000 hardware. (very expensive)

I do a lot of music mastering - primarily for CD release (such as the Breaking Bad score CD) and for high end video game scores (such as my work with Jesper Kyd on numerous Assassins Creed scores.... that I also mixed for him, and ..... Star Wars 1313 .... that I also did the recording & mixing for) and each project requires a different approach to final peak limiting.

However I also do film score mixing, (and recording) and the actual score delivered to the dub stage is generally NOT peak limited. This is standard industry practice. 8) 

best regards, 

John


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## synergy543 (Sep 23, 2012)

John Rodd @ Sun Sep 23 said:


> However I also do film score mixing, (and recording) and the actual score delivered to the dub stage is generally NOT peak limited. This is standard industry practice. 8)


John, if you have a perfectly good mix, but with only one or two very short (and inaudible) aberrant peaks, are you suggesting that there is not a good reason to peak limit in this case? 

To me, it wouldn't make sense not to - why send an unneeded spike through the chain? Or maybe you mean that limiting is done at the dubbing stage? (and not beforehand)

I think its important to clarify, otherwise many guys are going to start leaving spikes in their mixes - "like the pros do".


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## John Rodd (Sep 23, 2012)

synergy543 @ Sun Sep 23 said:


> John Rodd @ Sun Sep 23 said:
> 
> 
> > *However I also do film score mixing, (and recording) and the actual score delivered to the dub stage is generally NOT peak limited. This is standard industry practice.* 8)
> ...



To be clear - when I am taking about limiting in this thread... I specifically mean a brick-wall, look ahead peak limiter, such as the Waves L1, L2, or Massey L2007. I am NOT talking about compression on a mix. Buss compression is a whole different kettle of fish. If anyone reading this thread does not know the difference between buss compression ... and a brick-wall, look ahead peak limiter.... :shock: then crack out the books. 

anyway.....

Firstly - what on earth would be causing an inaudible peak (or ‘spike’ as you called it) in a music mix? Unless you have subsonic stuff going on (and you should not.... that should be dealt with in the mix.... but that is a different discussion) then what would cause ‘spikes’ that you can’t hear?
‘Spikes’ that you can’t hear would be, to me, a serious technical problem that would need to be fixed.... I have never had this problem. Please elaborate.

Secondly - in terms of musical peaks.... such as a dramatic tympani roll in the middle of a soft sustained string cue.... why would you want to flat-line (brick wall) shave the top off that peak, in a film music mix? 
Any film music mix is handed to a dubbing (or re-recording mixer) and he or she will blend the dialog, score and SFX. 
Why paint them into a bit of a corner? >8o 

There are a bunch of reasons to NOT peak limit a film score mix: peak limited film score ‘plays’ with dialog worse than non-limited music....... and ....... by peak limiting the film score you are reducing the amount of impact and dynamic range your film score has. 

It is widely thought that peak limiting increases the ‘punch’ of music... but that is incorrect. You are simply distorting the waveform of peaks by flat-lining them... and thus REDUCING impact. A common side effect of limiting is raising apparent volume, but you end up with louder music with *less* drama, punch, and impact. 

As it is film score mixes we are talking about... there are many other, often far superior ways to raise the apparent volume of a cue: orchestration / production / a great mix / careful buss compression / etc. :wink: 

I hope this helps. 8) 

John


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## synergy543 (Sep 23, 2012)

John Rodd @ Sun Sep 23 said:


> Firstly - what on earth would be causing an inaudible peak (or ‘spike’ as you called it) in a music mix? Unless you have subsonic stuff going on (and you should not.... that should be dealt with in the mix.... but that is a different discussion) then what would cause ‘spikes’ that you can’t hear?
> ‘Spikes’ that you can’t hear would be, to me, a serious technical problem that would need to be fixed.... I have never had this problem. Please elaborate.


I see this problem all the time with sample mixes. Particularly with percussion where there may be a single spike that is many dB above the other musical ones. These are different than musically expressive dynamics which I agree shouldn't be trimmed. 

I think there are also many cases where this occurs due to the nature of samples not being as smooth as a real acoustic instrument - for example, a series of snare rim shots being played where one RR may be significantly louder than surrounding samples. A real player (particularly an LSO player) would have much more control, but a sample player is simply playing a sequence or RRs on a keyboard which may put out considerably different MIDI volume levels (or sample layers might switch crosspoints). Sample development production is clearly not always on the same level as Abbey Road engineers. Still, I'm surprised you never see this at all.


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## John Rodd (Sep 23, 2012)

synergy543 @ Sun Sep 23 said:


> John Rodd @ Sun Sep 23 said:
> 
> 
> > *Firstly - what on earth would be causing an inaudible peak (or ‘spike’ as you called it) in a music mix? Unless you have subsonic stuff going on (and you should not.... that should be dealt with in the mix.... but that is a different discussion) then what would cause ‘spikes’ that you can’t hear?
> ...



What I said is - I never see 'spikes' in level of a mix _that I can't hear_. This was in reference to your concern and comment about inaudible 'spikes'.

and

yes I would agree that samples can sometimes be uneven, as can live players. For this I either do fader moves, or some compression on that individual track of the multitrack. (or let it just happen).


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