Self Mastering Limiter Tips

1) Add Limiter and Try Match Volume Against Commercial Records

• i.e. Fit Your Track to Others in that Same Genre by Making it as Loud as Possible Without Sounding Bad as Limiting can Add Distortion / Softening of Transients / Pumping / Shifts in the Tonal Balance

• To Do that you have to Compare the Mix vs the Limited Version at Equal Loudness and Listen for Artefacts on the Limited Version

• Set Limiter True Peak Option OFF, i.e. No Additional True Peak Limiting

• Instead Use Oversampling at Least 16x

2) Now Set Limiter to Equal Loudness to Better Hear the Artefacts of the Limited Signal

• i.e. No Volume Increase by Limiter to Judge the Result of Compression (i.e. Auto Gain in Limiter)

• Still Leave Limiter True Peak Option OFF but Use Oversampling at Least 16x

3) Adjust Limiter Attack and Release

• Use the Meters to See the Reduction and Adjust to the BPM of the Song (Meter Should Dance Rhythmically Along Song) 

• i.e. Set Release so After Limiting First Transient Limiter Falls Quickly Enough Back to Normal

4) Use the Lookahead but Not More than 0.18ms

• i.e. Above 0.18ms you Get Cleaner but you Loose Movement and Groove

5) Use a Clipper Before the Limiter to Gain Extra Loudness

• i.e. Reduce Peaks Prior Going into Limiter (e.g. Standard Clip in Hard Clip Mode with at Least 4x Oversampling)

6) Adjust Overall Tonal Balance to Fix Artefacts Caused by Limiting, i.e. How Much Highs / Mids / Lows

• Try to Find the Window of Acceptance Where Most People Agree it is Good Sounding, Mostly by Listening a Lot of Music

• to Set Overall Tonal Balance, Use EQ with Wide Bands, e.g. 1 Low Shelf Filter / 1 or 2 Wide Peak Bands in the Mids / 1 Hi Shelf Filter

7) Find Resonances and Build Ups which are Narrow Frequency Areas within a Mix that Contains a Lot of Energy

• i.e. in Step 6 you May Encounter that when You Raise the Highs to Set Overall Tonal Balance then the Highs are Already Too Aggressive, thus there Must be Something that is Causing it and these are Mostly Resonances and Build Ups which you Need to Control

• also Too Much Resonances in the 2kHz to 5kHz will Likely Mask Surrounding Frequencies as Well (also the Range Where Our Ears are Very Sensitive) 

• to Tame Resonances and Build Ups, Use a Static or Dynamic EQ with Narrow Dips, you can also Try Soothe / Gulfoss / Defilter / Unfilter to Do the Job or Help You Find the Spots