I’ve got no loudness issues, and my mix isn’t clipping. Should I still use a limiter on the master bus (zero gain, output ceiling at -0.1 dB)?
Personally, I don’t see the point, but I seem to remember that even if a master doesn’t have obvious digital peaks, D/A conversion and some streaming services may generate intersample peaks, so a limiter with a ceiling slightly below 0 dBFS would help prevent distortion, even if none is heard during mixing/mastering.
I can’t call myself an ‘expert’ but I have the Steinberg Brickwall Limiter plug-in set as Post fader in my main Control Room output bus, just for safety. IOW, to avoid any eventual and unwanted level boost.
If you are absolutely sure that your mix isn’t clipping at all, a limiter isn’t strictly speaking necessary. It is of course much easier to have one on your master per default than having to playback your whole track after every change to see whether you get clipping…
The topic of intersample peak overs (“intersample peaks” are completely normal and are everywhere in the audio signal) is subject of at times heated debates amongt mastering engineers. Unless you are one of those, you probably shouldn’t worry, and if you still decide to worry, the best way to prevent those is afaik with offline true peak normalization.
Else using a true peak limiter with a threshold of -1dBFS is probably a good starting point, just to be on the safe side.
Intersample peaks would be generated at the DAC stage, as you already wrote. Therefore a limiter on the master bus cannot prevent that. If you keep your peak to -1.0dBFS you should be ok.
Encoding audio to a compressed format can also cause higher peaks, so the rule of thumb is to not surpass -1.0dbTP (true peak). Of course a brickwall limiter can act as your insurance that you won’t surpass that level.
I am not a pro but I always have stock Brickwall Limiter on my Master Bus set to -1 dB. Just for safety.
I have worked on few mixes where I’ve been given 30-40 tracks and at some point due to “unforeseen circumstances” there will be an issue when I forget to mute or disable something and everything goes ballistic.
Better be safe than sorry.
I use C14’s own Limiter on the stereo out set to +6dB!
I followed pro advice on line, because I’m just an amateur. This pro audio chap said that the +6dB on the output makes you reduce tracks to a safe level with plenty of head room to tweak the mix whilst listening to a loud rich mix.
Seems to work , so all of my projects have the +6dB Limiter on the output. Waiting now for Cubase pros on here to explain why this is not a good idea.
It was a YouTube short. Tip for preparation to send mix for mastering, leaving headroom, IIRC. I’ll look through my viewing history and get back soonest.
If you send audio files to a mastering person just save/render the files in 32bit float. That will always give you more than 700dB headroom.
Some things are really easy.
I must admit I never saw the comments.
I just went ahead and tried the Limiter at +6dB, and for sure I found it meant I could experiment creatively with effects, EQs, and creative changes in track mixing levels (without multiple corrective changes in other levels to restore a loud clean output), whilst listening to a loud output easily tamed by moving one slider as necessary . It helped the creative process, so I adopted it.
I do realise there must be more than way to skin a cat. And I guess niavely, to amateurs, like me, the guy appears to be genius if it helps them, and to others (re comments), he’s just a “clever fool”, as it challenges established best practice.
Can’t ask for more.
I tend to use more compression/limiting than most folks here and about would consider appropriate. But it’s all down to the sound you want to create. On the other hand, I barely use any EQ, except to get rid of the hum on some of GrooveAgent’s cymbals, and such like.
