Brickwall limiter in Reaper

domforr

Hi, I'm trying to do some home mastering of some tracks I've recorded and am having some problems using Brickwall Limiters in Reaper.

So basically when I set the output level on the limiter to -0.1 db and lower the threshold it starts to clip on Reapers meter and also through the Mastering the Mix Levels plugin that I use to check clipping etc. I'm just pushing the limiter to the point where it starts to work, so not too hard really.

The tracks are all about -6db and have all been gain staged, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I can off course make it so that the track doesn't clip but the overall levels seems pretty low when I render.

Isn't a Brickwall Limiter supposed to cut all peaks above a certain level?

The limiters I've tried are: Ozone Maximizer, Fab filter limiter, T-Racks Brickwall limiter. I also have a compressor before this just to glue things.

Any ideas? 

I'm not interested in making my tracks massively loud, but would like them to be comparative to other releases if possible. 

stratman3142

I use Voxengo Elephant as a master limiter in Reaper (i.e. a limiter on Reaper's Master Track). I'm guessing other brickwall master limiters behave in a similar way, so hopefully this will help with the VSTs that you are using.

Voxengo Elephant has two main controls, one labelled 'In Gain' and the other labelled 'Out Gain (Ceiling)'. The Out Gain (Ceiling) knob sets the maximum output level and (in theory) stops any peaks above 0dB. However, I generally use a setting of slightly under 0dB  (say about -0.5dB) because I've noticed that rendering to mp3 can cause peaks slightly higher than 0dB.

I always keep Reaper's Master track level at 0dB. I can participate in the 'loudness wars' by increasing Voxengo Elephant's 'In Gain' setting. Then it's a case of following my ears in determining how far I want to compress the dynamics vs increase the overall perceived volume of the track.

As far as I'm aware, it's the level indicator on Reaper's Master track that really matters. So provided that doesn't go into the red, I believe it's OK if individual tracks might go into the red. But again I listen to how things sound.

domforr

Thanks for that. I might have to give Voxengo a try and see if it makes any difference. I think what's confusing me is the idea that nothing goes beyond the output level you've set, which doesn't seem to actually apply in practice. I think I'll try and set the level to -0.5 as you've done and see if that helps. 

horse

I think I've confused myself before with a limiter on the master bus, but still getting clipping, and think it was due to the master bus fader being set higher than 0, but sounds like you've already ruled that out? Other than that, using reaper with a brickwall / 'look ahead' limiter it has always been fine for me and as you'd expect - Waves, voxengo etc

Edit - and you should definitely be able to push the loudness up considerably without actual clipping if you so wish (or be more subtle to keep some dynamics)

Danny1969

How is your Reaper master bus set to show ? if you right click on it you can set RMS or RMS plus Peak etc

You can use ReaComp , Reapers own one as a good limiter if you set the ratio to infinity and then set the threshold and watch the output

domforr

Not sure how the master bus is set - doesn't seem to be coming up with any options if I right click on it? I seem to be having a bit more success setting the output on the limiter to -0.5db.

Any idea if T-Racks Brickwall limiter is a lookahead?

shrinkwrap

I've struggled with this as well.
The simplest free limiter is Loudmax by Thomas Mundt and the only one I've got to to do what was expected.
But I've found it all a pain so just use ReaComp set to mild compression with look ahead - but I don't do loud rock stuff!

Danny1969

domforr said:

Not sure how the master bus is set - doesn't seem to be coming up with any options if I right click on it? I seem to be having a bit more success setting the output on the limiter to -0.5db.

Any idea if T-Racks Brickwall limiter is a lookahead?

Right click on the actual meter scale on the master fader, bottom left on default layout. Reaper normally shows red at -001dB of FSD .... in this default mode you will see red even though the limiter is set to 0dB because Reaper is set to show red at LESS than 0dB . 
If you right click on the scale you can change how the meter responds to showing level

As much as there are better limiters out there I actually achieved my loudest mix ever using Reacomp ..... I did it because our Protools systems in the studio bounced in real time and I only had 15 minutes to master a whole EP. So I basically threw the tracks into Reaper, whacked 2 X Reacomp on the master bus ...... 1 set to gentle compression and one set as a brickwall master. The finished tracks were louder than the then current Foos Album Wasted Light 

domforr

Is this what I should be looking at?:

 

Should the red threshold be on 0db?

Stuckfast

What might be the case is that your limiter is keeping every individual sample to -0.1dBFS or below, but that the reconstructed signal still has peaks above 0dBFS. I'm pretty sure the Mastering the Mix Levels plug-in is designed to show these inter-sample peaks, not sure about the metering in Reaper. They can apparently be a problem when the file is encoded to MP3 or AAC or whatever for streaming.

Incidentally if you're struggling to match the loudness of other tracks in a comparable style, it's most likely down to the mix rather than the mastering. For instance if you have a lot more low bass in your tracks, that will be eating up headroom and stopping the overall loudness of your tracks from being comparable with references.

domforr

Stuckfast said:

What might be the case is that your limiter is keeping every individual sample to -0.1dBFS or below, but that the reconstructed signal still has peaks above 0dBFS. I'm pretty sure the Mastering the Mix Levels plug-in is designed to show these inter-sample peaks, not sure about the metering in Reaper. They can apparently be a problem when the file is encoded to MP3 or AAC or whatever for streaming.

Incidentally if you're struggling to match the loudness of other tracks in a comparable style, it's most likely down to the mix rather than the mastering. For instance if you have a lot more low bass in your tracks, that will be eating up headroom and stopping the overall loudness of your tracks from being comparable with references.

Thanks for the tips. I've decided to trust the Levels plug in and sacrifice a bit of loudness to keep things like the dynamic range and peaks within that parameter. 

Is it worth low passing anything under 40hz to make sure there's no bass frequencies sneaking through? It's not really bass heavy music, but I suppose anything with bass guitar, low kicks or frame drums might have some unneeded low frequencies.

Stuckfast

You could certainly stick a high-pass filter on the master bus at say 30Hz in case of any subsonic rumbles, but what I really meant was that quite a lot of 'home studio' mixes don't have enough attention paid to the overall tonality and balance of different frequencies. It's easy to end up in a situation where there isn't enough mid-range, and really it's that 500Hz - 3kHz region that is crucial for loudness as it's the area to which our hearing is most sensitive.