Best Limiter? Master Plan vs Fabfilter Pro-L2

[@JKOnTheTrack]

Since master plan came out, it’s been on every finished track. Definitely my favorite.

[@Joey-rp5vg]

The Master Plan limiter sounds pretty darn good. Thanks for the heads up. Great video man

[@sebastopolband]

Hi Matthew - interesting video. One small point about the Pro-L 2 is that I would *never* run it in only 4x OS mode. The minimum I would use is 16x. At only 4x you are going to get a lot of artefacts and a lot of distortion. One way to zone in on the difference is to render at both settings and then listen to the delta. Another slightly less important point is that +9dB is a lot of gain to push into any limiter, especially the Pro-L 2. Because of what’s going on under the hood I’ve found that any more than about +6dB changes the tonal balance which makes me think that there are at least a couple of stages going on inside. I therefore add level before in a way that I know is truly linear gain. And, of course, adding a clipper (provided that you’re doing a very small amount of clipping and have enough oversampling to eliminate the artefacts) is the best way to get the Pro-L 2 to perform.

[@junovue]

Yes finally!!! Do you still clip with the master plan? If so how much do you find yourself clipping?

[@paulmistygatz7888]

Hey Mathew! Great video! I just learned about the Masterplan recently. Really tempting! I usually use for my final stages: - Clipper - Limiter 1 (heavier work) - rounding things off - limiter 2 (almost nothing) I use StandardClip or Acustica Lift for the Clipper, then Weiss Limiter, and for the last limiter I use Fabfilter. I tried MP on a mix that I’ve already mastered and 3 people. told me they like that Version a bit better than my own mastering chain with 8-10 plugins each doing very specific things. The difference is subtle. It’s not that my other master was bad, but I was buffled that this one plug-in did replace my whole chain and getting the job done so much faster and easier! Personally I feel that the more plugins I have to open and tweak the more distracted i get. I think I lose focus and objectivity. How do you feel about the quality? It feels so bad to leave some expensive plugins behind like the Weiss Limiter or the Sontec EQ. Man…😅

[@WeissAdvice]

Holding on to something less effective is called the "Sunk Cost" fallacy. Personally, the less I need in order to get a job done, the better. The only benefit to having everything as a separate plugin like that is slightly finer control, but my typical REF-Master chain is an EQ, a compressor, and Master Plan. That's it.

[@paulmistygatz7888]

@@WeissAdvice ahhh, it’s primarily as a reference for the ME? Makes sense!

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

Matthew, what about the Schwabe Gold compared to the Master Plan?

[@joesalyers]

This limiter looks like something I need to check out. On a side note Matthew let me pass a small bit of info to ya, I learned last year when you upload a video give it 4 to 6 hours before release if its 4K since youtube changed its policy on transcoding videos. 1080p videos transcode pretty quick but 4K & 1440p videos will take a couple hours. If you just upload and publish it will be low resolution until the transcoding is complete.

[@WeissAdvice]

4 to 6 hours... ew.. Sigh. Good looking out.

[@joesalyers]

@@WeissAdvice I know it is a pain. But you can set the release time when you upload the video on the last page where it says publish! I usually set 4k videos to 4 hours later. 1080p will transcode within 30 minutes but high resolution videos take way too long now days!

[@sin_phany_tv]

Hello, and thank you for the great tutorial, I am a blind user, and use the Apple Voiceover screen reader to navigate, it’s slightly a little difficult to follow you in someways, but you did an amazing job of explaining. Is there any chance that you could create a couple pieces for me That I could start by and I could just tweak it just slightly? It will help me quite immensely since I can’t follow along all the way, thank you so much. Because at the moment I’m using the limiter from the God particle, but it would be great to use this one but I don’t know how to turn off the parameters so I could just keep the limiter portion or I love what you’re doing that it’s adding a little bit of tape here a little bit of cleaners here, And I love the harshness calm button. I wish I could find that.

[@user-mz3ni8yu4v]

Master Plan for the win

[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

Never tried Master Plan if it ever goes on sale for $29 I'll pick it up 😂 I own most other limiters tho and my go to at the moment is the bx True Peak limiter. It doesn't eat up the low end like most limiters and the XL saturation sounds magnificent 😁👌🏾

[@tcmuze]

Yeah, I like Masterplan. I own it and have been toying with the idea of using it in combination with Ozone. I would use Ozone as a starting point but deactivate the limiter and use Masterplan as the final limiter.

[@sin_phany_tv]

Hey, what’s up, I’m a blind user, and currently I’m using master plan for a limiter, and the same and fab filter, limiter, is there any chance you can make a pizza for me with what you have set on your fat filter, limiter master, and the same as the master plan For an ideal master limiter since I’m not able to change the parameters and I could just open the preset, are you able to do that for me? I use ProTools and logic.

[@robshrock-shirakbari1862]

Much more clarity in Master Plan on the first example. (That's as far as I've gotten.) EDITE: Top end sounds terrible on the Pro-L2 in this example... cloudy, smeared, slightly distorted. In fact, I don't like the top end on any of the FF plugs, and that includes Pro-Q3. Great GUIs; but I don't get the professional enthusiasm for FF plugs beyond the workflow. I have Master Plan, and it's on my short list with MD4 HD, Limitless, and Weiss MM-1 as final limiter choices. Pro-L2 never sounded that good to me, except maybe the Safe and Transparent modes. All the other modes sound bad to me, and I don't use it ever. Of course, YMMV.

[@letsstartapeaceriot]

I’ve heard pro-q causes phase issues.

[@JorjhanKastro]

What do you think about using both of them? for example pushing a bit with L2 first and then MasterPlan

[@WeissAdvice]

I was doing that at first as I was getting more used to the sound of Master Plan. But then once I figured out the gain staging bit I didn't really feel the need to have Pro-L2 on there any more.

[@AVDRE]

Maybe try some clipping before going into masterplan, that's what I've been doing anyways

[@_allcap]

Master Plan definitely feels denser. I assume its from the clipping distortion. Have you tried running a clipper into L2? I've really been liking Newfangled audio Saturate for this.

[@WeissAdvice]

Standard Clip, yea

[@the_handsome_bear]

I actually use gold clip into gulfoss master into master plan on my main bus. Sometimes I'll even put another limiter like ozone or god particle before the master plan to get the volume to 8lufs

[@AVDRE]

All of that just for only -8lufs ? With those extra stuff I figured you'd get above -6 at least..

[@the_handsome_bear]

@@AVDRE might as well make it 4 huh

[@hermianofficial3400]

Interesting. I definitely liked Master Plan better. Felt a bit more thicker. What are your thoughts on Newfangled Audio Elevate?

[@WeissAdvice]

Haven't tried it yet. What are your thoughts on it?

[@hermianofficial3400]

@@WeissAdvice It sounds pretty good and can get quite loud. It definitely takes some time to get used to. I really like the transient emphasis and saturation section though. Definitely one of the more interesting limiters I've tried.

[@ramspencer5492]

Master Plan is a cool plug-in.... I think Sonnible PureLimit Is it really good limiter... What about multi-stage limiting? Is that a thing? Like master plan with another plug-in carrying part of the load!

[@ParadNorthProd]

In that first song, it sounds like both limiters are distorting the kick on my headphones. Strange.

[@bakerlefdaoui6801]

Heard same thing, distortion on low end was WILD !

[@WeissAdvice]

Yea - at first I didn't notice a significant amount of clipping on the kick in the Fabfilter playback, but you'll notice around 8:00 I mention that I'm hearing clipping in both. I wouldn't exactly describe the distortion as "wild" though. Definitely there but not like fuzzing out.

[@bakerlefdaoui6801]

Well I don't know why on my monitors distortion is subtle, but on headphones it is quite obvious. I have no explanation !@@WeissAdvice

[@django3108]

Best limiter def DMG Limitless and better than both of these imo.

[@rundajulesproductions7735]

BTW those two I liked the Master Plan. In most instances I would say the limiter made the mix sound worse, though. If it wasn't necessary, I wouldn't use a limiter. I liked MP when I tried the demo, but I like BX Master Desk true peak I use enough to not want to switch. If I owned both I would probably use MP on any limiting done per track bc all the tone compensation/shaping is enough to cut out multiple plug-ins as you mention, but I would still use the BX master desk one for the mixbus. Maybe I just know how to get it to sound like I want it through experience?

[@WeissAdvice]

Oh for sure - pushing up to -8LUFS is almost never ever an improvement. It's a game of least sacrificed. But... this is the world we live in for now.