I’ve been struggling with this for a while and I figured someone may be smart enough on here to at least point me in the right direction. I am mastering to -11DBFS. I have a BW Limiter set to Kill the Transients default in C8, followed by another limiter (input 6, output -0.3).
I can see true peak readings of +3.8db. At this point, I hear no noticeable distortion but these overshoots are bothering me. I’ve tried everything I know of to get rid of those and they still persist. The only thing that seems to work is lowering the overall output level by 3.8 so that true peak is 0db but then the master sounds 3db too soft. If I touch the limiter again at this point, sure enough, true peak starts to float back up. So basically, I want to get to -11dbfs with true peak at 0.
I know it’s an ISP, the limiter is not working on it. It’s dead last in my chain and no amount of tweaking works. I put two limiters on and that took it down by about 0.5 db only. Anymore aggressive setting and it’s starts to pump.
[Them]
The limiter is a peak limiter so it is working correctly however loudness is not quite the same way that is how you can have a brick wall set to limit to under 0 but still have a loudness of more than 0.
TC wrote a great article on the subject. Basically the loudness meter is looking at more than just peaks. http://www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/loudness-explained/
[Me]
Read the article. Summarizing, the cubase limiter does not affect true peak, correct? Is there a limiter or compressor that you are aware of that will affect true peak available from Steinberg? I’m still concerned that those peaks will introduce distortion during analogue conversion.
[Them]
You should be fine on conversion. The True Peak is more like the perceived loudness.