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Recording tip #28: Be Cautious using Limiters

Recording tip #28: Be cautious using brickwall limiters like the L2. If your mixes resemble a brickwall, back it off.

The advent of digital recording brought in a whole new playground of toys with which to play for mixers. And in my view with all the myriad of processors now at our disposal, nothing has really changed the sonic landscape as much as the so-called “Brickwall” limiter.

I remember the first time I loaded a modern, mastered CD into Protools. It was a project I’d mixed in an analog console and mastered by Bob Ludwig. The move to “in-the-box mixing had yet to really happen, though most of us were recording in a digital DAW of one kind or another, most mixing was still analog. So I loaded it in. And there it was… the waveforms cut like a finely cut hedgerow garden in England. ALL the transients lopped off and looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Of course Ludwig is one of the most respected mastering engineers in the business and it sounded great. But I was amazed at what I saw and wondered if such an approach made sense on all types of music.

It’s been a good many years since that day. And since then mixing in the box isn’t that uncommon at all. In fact, almost every mixer uses some form of it and with that comes the opportunity to put an L2 or any other limiter which can smash ever single transient to smithereens. The trick is knowing how much to apply. … Read More, Watch, Comment – Backstage Pass Required