The humble limiter has come a long way in recent years, offering a lot more than just a simple hard stop before any unwanted red lights. With just a dusting of controls, see and hear for yourself as we check out the very latest with a lot going on under the hood.
Limiting - Art Or Science?
Creating deliverables that are both undamaged and loudness-compliant isn’t something many creators have had to deal with traditionally, but things are changing quickly. For those who find themselves at both ends of the creative process, limiting is a fact of life that is there to be used and understood for the better.
Utility Limiting
The utility limiter’s purpose is one of setting a maximum peak level and protecting the audio from overs. Turning audio up or down ‘into’ a limiter can also be used to set integrated loudness. Louder values can be more susceptible to distortion; limiting does not introduce distortion per se, however pushing the audio up against it squares off peaks in the same way that distortion can. Lower loudness from less limiting can reward with clean, unaffected audio.
Creative Limiting
While limiters have traditionally been developed as studio utility tools, some limiters trade on their creative chops. These often employ ‘soft’ flavours that can behave with a more analogue-like ‘cushion’ effect as found with media such as tape. Control over ratios and knees to this effect can give variation to these ‘character’ limiters; limiter ceiling can be set to give the correct loudness to counter the amount of creative limiting.
AI Limiting For Creatives
Back in December 2021 we put pure:limit’s big sister smart:limit to the test, from which the former derives its AI technology. The main point of difference is the latter’s simplicity in use, designed to be of more use to the engineering creator. As a result, this tool sets out to strike a balance between the inherent ‘utility’ nature of limiting, and some of the creative possibilities it can bring.
Watch in the video how we deploy pure:limit’s simple workflow to explore its creative chops as well as its technical ones. We then demonstrate how it can be used with other audio plugins to get the required loudness for release.
Sonible On pure:limit
With pure:limit, sonible has developed a new limiter for users who want to achieve the best possible sound without having to tweak too many complex parameters. Although this AI-powered plug-in is compact on the outside, it packs a powerful punch within: pure:limit effortlessly tames peaks, balances dynamics and finds the right level for a mix
pure:limit is the right tool for creators who want to put the finishing touches on their mix without delving into parametric details. This limiter features a clean interface design that interactively visualises the limited audio signal. Additionally, pure:limit offers two effective sound-shaping tools: to enhance a desired vibe, the “style selector” lets the user determine how forcefully the limiter should hit the signal, and the “inflate parameter” offers the option to create a richer, more vibrant sound.
pure:limit Key Features:
Automatic parametrization for high-quality results
AI-powered processing and genre-based profiles
Sound-shaping features – style selector and inflate parameter
User-centred, clean interface design
The Creatives’ Limiter?
Pure:limit is billed by Sonible as “a simple yet powerful AI driven plug-in that tames peaks, balances out dynamics and finds the right level for a mix – at the touch of one button.” This makes it useful for anyone who wants to tread the line between applying an aesthetic flavour from limiting and simply deciding how loud the result needs to be.
On the subject of loudness, this tool is designed to be used upstream of the loudness meter of the user’s choice. That’s no bad thing, as the creative leanings of this tool, combined with a simple GUI would make more numbers to read seem like an unwelcome addition. Those who need everything in one place needn’t be disappointed though; Sonible provide smart:limit for that. For anyone else, pure:limit sounds like it is using the same mode of gain reduction as smart:limit, and for that it sounds clean unless provoked at the extremes. This means it can provide different creative shades of processing, while at the same time keeping audio away from any full-scale nasties for those who need simplicity.