For many of us, getting our mixes louder without losing quality can be a challenge. With several differences under its belt to make it stand out from the crowd, could UrsaDSP’s Boost be the limiter to enhance loudness and ditch the distortion? Luke Goddard takes things higher to find out.
Why Limit?
We don’t always need to limit, but when it comes to entire mixes, a limiter (when used carefully along with metering) can help achieve target loudness without changing the aesthetic too much and avoiding clipping. Read Mike Thornton’s article Loudness- Everything You Need To Know to find out why engineers no longer need to worry about getting their mix louder than the “competition”.
How Boost Does It
Rather than flattening transients as traditional limiters do, Boost’s true peak “Trajectory” lookahead technology promises to limit in a way which lets you raise the level without introducing distortion.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Boost is its intelligent gain reduction curve which definitely isn’t tied to the tried and trusted Infinity:1 approach. UrsaDSP refer to this as Upward Limiting, where the peaks above the threshold remain unaffected and the gain reduction happens in audio below the threshold.
How Do I Use Boost?
In case you missed it, there is a very large control in the middle of the plugin called Boost. If you set Output to say, -1dBFS, leave everything else alone, and set Boost by ear you will not go wrong. Whatever you dial in, the Boost control with its gain reduction curve takes centre stage, leaving it impossible not to see what you’re doing even when you can’t hear it… This is really intuitive and I like it a lot. Just add a loudness meter of your choice and you’re sorted.
Two other unique features, Focus and Emphasis, further affect the shape of the gain reduction. The former can bring out the “tail” of sounds, such as ambience, whereas the latter can lift the perceived loudness of transients without actually affecting the dynamic range of the audio. This second feature will give more predictable results when uploading to streaming services.
In addition to these controls, switching Emphasis out gives you a simple Drive control that lets you introduce saturation without applying any limiting. When you are limiting, Max Gain puts the brakes on Boost’s makeup gain to avoid bringing up things that should stay low down, such as reverb tails.
Final Thoughts
Like any limiter Boost can be provoked into distortion, but only if you’re determined! I would have liked to see a dedicated gain reduction meter, but there are plenty of other tools out there that can do that. The whole point is to free us from the numbers and to help us use our ears when it comes to clean limiting, and Boost does it effortlessly.
If you head over to the Devious Machines website, code ursa-expert-2021 offers 25% off Boost and is valid until the 15th August.
Thanks to Brazen Foxes for the use of their track in this article