Our recent round-up of top notch limiters drew plenty of suggestions from readers as to others that they reckoned should have made the cut. With so many fantastic options out there, our selection – as ever – wasn’t intended to be a definitive ‘top six’, so based on that input, here are five more awesome limiting plugins that you should definitely add to your wish list.
DMG Audio Limitless
From the brilliant mind of industry veteran Dave Gamble, this innovative mastering limiter employs a dual-stage design to independently clamp down on transients and the rest of the signal across up to six discrete frequency bands. The default view is minimalist and straightforward, housing just Threshold, Ceiling and Release sliders, plus a menu of six preset limiting styles (‘Aggressive’, ‘Punchy’, ‘Transparent’, etc) and the configurable ‘Manual’ option. Switching to the Advanced view reveals controls for adjusting Input Trim, bandsplit Filter Slope (6-96dB/octave), band Separation and Stereo Link, as well as the ‘Manual’ mode parameters – Lookahead, Knee, Release Shape, etc. Here you’ll also find the pre-limiter Clipping section, with its five waveshaping algorithms, and a final dither stage.
The omnipresent central display, meanwhile, features three modes: a spectrogram overlaid with EQ-style controls for setting the frequencies, gains and release times of the six bands; a scrolling waveform showing limiter activity and gain reduction; and a loudness histogram.
Thanks to its dual-stage architecture and the quasi-magical DSP at its core (not least in the excellent clipper), Limitless might be the most transparent limiter we’ve ever heard – the amount of loudness it can pull out of a mix before degradation even begins to emerge is truly extraordinary. And with outstanding visual feedback, an admirably user-friendly interface and a shedload of under-the-hood preferences to play around with, it’s about as perfect a plugin as has ever been coded.
Newfangled Audio Elevate
At heart of their Elevate limiter (and the EQuivocate EQ that accompanies it in the Elevate Mastering Bundle), Newfangled Audio’s linear phase ‘auditory filter bank’ technology divides the audible frequency spectrum into up to 26 bands, each one separately adjustable but collectively set by default to the frequencies of the Mel scale, simulating the perceptual specifics of the human ear. The plugin uses an ‘intelligent’ adaptive algorithm to apply limiting to each band individually, the theory being that adhering to the Mel scale in this way should deliver the most natural sound possible. And it works! Elevate does indeed come across as supremely smooth and transparent, and if its self-guided adaptive processing isn’t hitting the mark for your specific source material, you can take total control in the Filter Bank, Limiter/EQ, Transient and Spectral Clipper sub-modules.
Unique in both concept and practicality, Elevate’s groundbreaking approach to dynamics processing, and the quality of the results it yields, make it a cut above the rest.
McDSP ML8000 Advanced Limiter
McDSP’s acclaimed plugin is based on a dual-stage design, comprising a multiband limiting stage followed by a broadband ‘Master’ stage. The multiband limiter enables per-band adjustment of gain and threshold (with automatic setting of the latter via the Snap button), and tweaking of overall Knee shape and Release time, and uses active processing, rather than conventional passive crossovers, to minimise phase issues across its eight frequency bands. The Master limiter adds Threshold and Ceiling to the aforementioned Knee and Release knobs, and each of the two limiters can also be set to any of six ‘character’ algorithms and bypassed independently. It all adds up to a concise but highly flexible limiter that’s just as at home on individual tracks and busses as it is the master output. Check out Eli Krantzberg’s video review to find out more.
Nugen ISL 2
Available in stereo and surround versions, Nugen’s True Peak limiter serves up quality brickwall limiting in a plugin that couldn’t be easier to use: set the True Peak limit to cater to your target streaming/broadcast platform, and push the input gain as required. Lookahead and release times are adjustable, with Auto Release enabling shorter release times to be set without introducing distortion; channel linking is on hand for guiding the interplay between the limiters on each channel; and dither can be applied at the output with one of three noise shaping modes. Metering is comprehensive, too, with customisable colours, splits and ballistics, and a histogram view with Steering and Ducking meters to visualise the effect of the Channel Link setting.
ISL 2’s no-nonsense interface and workmanlike feature set have helped it to find its place as a fixture in countless music and post studios around the world. The fact that it’s so incredibly transparent doesn’t hurt either, of course. Mike Thornton gave his thoughts on the original ISL back in 2015.
iZotope Ozone 9 Maximizer
Bought and deployed as a module within their insanely popular Ozone 9 mastering suite (it’s included in every version from the affordable Elements to the all-in Advanced), iZotope’s Maximizer must be one of the most widely used limiters around. And that’s fine with us, as it’s an absolute belter.
Powered by the developer’s proprietary Intelligent Release Control (IRC) algorithm – with its five distinct modes trading performance for CPU overhead and latency, and various character styles affecting colouration, detail and transient preservation – Ozone 9 Maximizer presents a wealth of base-level options right out of the gate. On top of that, True Peak detection is onboard, along with automatic threshold adjustment (to a specified LUFS target), separate stereo linking for the transient and sustain portions of the signal, pre-limiting transient shaping, and threshold/ceiling linking. And don’t forget that this flawlessly clean and transparent limiter is just one of many equally impressive modules in the Ozone 9 rack, making it viable for solo usage or as the final stage in a complete integrated mastering chain.
Any more for any more? Is your favourite limiter still not getting its moment in the Production Expert spotlight? We’re unlikely to revisit this particular subject again in the near future, it must be said, but let us know in the comments anyway.