The Sound Board

Perhaps not mankind's final word in audio limiting, but knowing DMG Audio's flawless track-record so far, very likely as close to that as we can get today: DMG Audio's Limitless
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I dived right in and it's seriously good to my ears

I use EQuilibrium everyday and it's smooth 250 curves. Love it. Love it.

Aesthete wrote:I use EQuilibrium everyday and it's smooth 250 curves. Love it. Love it.

and you didn't even give it a mention on your go to list?

As you can see the list is in progress.

Raymond_Kemp wrote:

Aesthete wrote:I use EQuilibrium everyday and it's smooth 250 curves. Love it. Love it.

and you didn't even give it a mention on your go to list?

I got the demo. Seriously good sounding!

Piet, as the OP on this discussion I wonder, have you demo'd this plugin and if so do you have any early observations to share.
I have Limitless and used it on every cue recorded since. An example would be my efforts in the EQ plugin tests however, only in transparent mode where the minimum amount of compression was applied as it was in the effects chain to catch no more than the odd peak.
In saying that, when pushed harder there was little adverse signs of squashing.

Ray, I haven't demo'd it yet because I'm going to buy it anyway. The trouble is, I've already overpaypalled myself this month, so it'll have to wait ... I did request a demo license earlier this morning though, but the mail from DMG hasn't arrived yet.

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Been there done it.
Funnily enough my demo license came very quickly but when within an hour of use I paid up for the full license it didn't turn up until I emailed them about the delay. There was then instant response and I got it within minutes.
Just as a side issue, I'm finding very good results using Essence for parallel compression. Not just specific bands but over the whole spectrum. Probably this addresses Guy's question about whether particular developers' programming seeming to be better than stock plugins.

Since I'm in the company of friends, I'll risk exposing my ignorance.

I can see the quality and cleverness of a limiter really mattering when you want to crush peaks. And I admit, the multiband functionality of Limitless greatly appeals to my inner nerd. But for the class of music I suspect most of us here do, in what ways are you benefiting from something like Limitless?

I use Fabfilter Pro-L, and basically the way I use a limiter is a naive safe (non-clipping) way to "make it go loud" but I never dial it so high that I'm flattening my peaks any more than a trivial amount and only rarely.

Would the world's cleverest limiter matter in such a use-case? Or is there a use-case for Limitless even for orchestral music beyond what something like Pro-L (a quite respectable limiter by all accounts) can do?

Jason, to keep to the simplest of terms (because the developer spells out what goes on under the hood better than I ever will) if you download Limitless complete with demo license, setup a track to be processed, compare both using each limiter and can hear no difference. It'll be a waste of money. This isn't meant as sarcasm but just me saying if I tell you I can but we are not both in the same room listening to the same monitors. I can't really prove it to you or anyone.

I did try the demo, and didn't hear any difference with my use-case. I do hear what I think is an improvement when I start really crushing the levels, and maybe that's where Limitless really starts to shine (EDM type content).

But my ears aren't terribly well trained here, so maybe I'm not listening for the right things. It's not quite as simple as "if you don't hear a difference it's a waste of money" because I freely admit that my not hearing a difference isn't a great litmus test for such things. I have noticed once I discover what nuance to listen for, I suddenly can't stop hearing it. And that may well be the case here, that even in an orchestral context with a gentler treatment, there is an improvement to be observed if only my attention was focused in the right places.

Although, granted, maybe the written word isn't the best medium to discuss these nuances.

Well, we're now talking about ear training rather than plugin comparing.
Did you read the manual while trying Limitless. It really does spell out how it works and how to tweak for best result on any material.

Lovely plugin and up to the usual Dave Gamble standard, to use Piet new verb, I have overpaypalled myself this month. The normal test of limiters is how much they degrade when pushed hard and this one is stellar in that department, if you are stuck with using the L1/2 than this is must have. I briefly tested it against FFProL, Slate FGX and Ozone 7 and it was as good as these and sometimes better depending on the material and gain reduction. CPU usage is med-high depending, not OTT. Worth a demo definitely.

I just downloaded the demo this morning (I usually use L1). Sounds good to my ears so far. Haven't delved in too much as I tend to very gentle in my limiting.