Three master-limiting tips

Limiters are an essential master bus effect. Here’s how to set one up... Essentially a compressor with a ratio of inf:1, a brickwall limiter is usually the final effect in the mastering engineer’s chain of processing. Its overuse started the infamous Loudness War a decade or so ago, but even though loudness trends and tastes have subsided somewhat since then, the digital limiter is still essential for reducing a track’s peaks and ultimately increasing perceived volume up to commercial standards.

As a fast-acting compressor, limiters act on short-duration peaks, meaning you’ll usually want to keep attack times to the fastest possible. Thanks to their minimal controls, you can apply gain reduction and forget about it – but often you’ll need to tweak things further.

Therefore, here are a trio of tips for master-bus limiting. Don’t forget that every limiter has its own unique sound, so don’t be afraid to trial different limiters in the search for one that best suits the track in question.

If we make any sound or mix louder, we’ll automatically think it sounds better. So, to hear the potentially-destructive side-effects of limiting, and evaluate the effectiveness of your gain reduction, always match the amount of input gain you apply to...

As a limiter is designed to pull down short-duration peaks, set attack time to the fastest setting. To dial in a release time appropriate for your track, exaggerate the limiting until distortion occurs, tweak release to minimise distortion, then lower...

Many popular mastering-grade limiter plugins offer multiple ‘modes’ for different scenarios, so make sure you try all these options. Evaluate the aggression, transient response and transparency of each mode, then choose what’s suitable for your source...