‘Transparent’ vs ‘Character-Driven’ Limiters for your Music Part 1

Hello, everyone, I’m Alex, and in this two-part post, I will be reviewing four different limiters. Two of these are “transparent” and the other two are “character-driven” limiters. I will also be giving some suggestions on how to approach these audio limiters, and explain what type of limiter you may consider using for your mixes or final masters.

Why is limiting important?

Whether you want to make your music louder or just change the tone of your vocals, instruments, synths, etc, limiting your music can potentially shape your music into an entirely different realm. There are many different types of limiters, but I will now discuss the two main types.

What is transparent limiting?

A transparent limiter limits the sound without making major changes to its character. In modern music, we are obsessed with the loudness war and insist on taking everything and turning it up by many decibels, by slapping on a limiter and heavily cranking up the gain. The most ideal transparent limiter should not affect the tone of the sound at all, only making the source audio louder. For this, some limiters may sneak in clipping for the best results possible.

What is ‘character-driven’ or ‘colour’ limiting?

When you think of analogue equipment, for example, the idea of transformers comes into mind. Sage Audio has made a detailed, but a cohesive explanation of transformers. To summarise, they mention the idea of transients being cut and coils of insulated wires being wrapped around magnetic cores, which in turn forms a process named magnetic coupling. All of this forms harmonic distortion, and in the case of limiters, this is a reason why some may prefer character-driven limiting. This is why you often hear the terms “warm” and “crackly” being thrown around, due to the origin of transformers. The ‘colour’ of these Limiters is what makes them attractive, regardless of whether they emulate Analogue equipment or not. Another way to think of a limiter with character is the idea of sprinkling on ‘sweetness’ or ‘sugar’ to a sound. How much depends on the artist’s intentions and the context of the music. The same can be said for other digital and analogue processes, not just limiting.

Which of these two types should I use?

Which type you use may depend on the type of music you are making and simply what taste you and your audience have. First, let’s take a look at the qualities of the W1 Limiter and Loudmax, then see what makes them transparent and why you may want to apply them to your music.

“Transparent” Limiters - W1 Limiter vs LoudMax Limiter

W1 Limiter

George Yohng’s W1 Limiter is as simple as ‘transparent’ limiting gets, except there is an adaptive release. It is useful for your limiter to understand and anticipate what’s coming next in the audio before it decides how much limiting it does to the audio. This is especially useful for dynamic songs where you have super quiet verses followed by super loud choruses, for example, or the music gradually becomes louder and the limiter therefore begins to warm up in its limiting. The adaptive release option, which places the release time at 250.0ms gives more opportunity for the signal to be smoother.

Even though this limiter doesn’t protect against true peaks as much and has some harmonics (if pushed ridiculously hard), it sounds almost identical to the L1 Waves limiter. This is my favourite limiter, because even a couple of decibels is enough to elevate and add more elegance to a sound. Yes, it may be ‘less’ transparent than LoudMax, but unless you really are aiming for a drastically different sound, this should be the easiest limiter of all of them to use. The adaptive release will help reduce artefacts tremendously.

LoudMax

As well as being able to link the ceiling to the threshold, LoudMax’s ISP protection can allow opportunities for automating the ceiling for sections where the limiter may start to work too hard. With limiters like LoudMax and W1, the gain compensation is one aspect that makes ‘bad’ or ‘flawed’ distortion difficult to achieve with these limiters. However, if you push the threshold way too high, (depending on the transients), this can potentially make the music duck too much, especially if the audio is overly loud and it introduces a hyperventilated effect to the music. You may also achieve an extremely beefy and crunchy effect on the music, which can possibly remove the transparent quality of this limiter. This artifact is also similar to Logic’s legacy limiter.

This limiter is also FREE and simple to use. If you are looking for a limiter in your arsenal, this one can take a bashing, if you want to use it for extreme purposes. I use this limiter and the sweet spot for me is -3dB to -5dB. Even with that range, the perceived loudness is incredible.

In this post, I have discussed the transparency of LoudMax and the W1 Limiter and how they can occasionally bring more character. In the second part of this post, I will take the opposite approach and go into more detail on VladG’s Limiter. No 6 and TDR’s Limiter No. 6 ‘character-driven’ or ‘colour’ limiters, as well as how you can use them as transparent limiters, depending on your approach to using them.