Why Fruity Limiter is on my master channel (and why it isn't ruining my mix)

[@Overxpossed]

I'm more familiarised with the compressor. It has multiple uses besides compressing, like balancing (normalizing) the amplitude. Using a quiter volume would only make audible the peaks of the sound, but with a compressor, that can be balanced. I guess limiting does a similar job but can't tell the difference.

[@steevmsteevm]

It' like a compressor with an infinite ratio basically. So anything above the ceiling (or threshold) is clamped to the ceiling - at least, in a mathematically perfect model. I think you can still get ISPs with Fruity Limiter; there are other limiters that offer functions for taming those too. But that's overkill for this purpose (I'm not mastering, just setting a hard limit for how loud the sound going to my mixer can be). I've still got a lot of headroom on the digital mixer, so inter-sample peaks aren't really an issue in this context. Btw normalising is different. It just applies gain to a signal to bring it to a specific level. It doesn't affect the dynamic range, which is what compression does. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization for more.

[@Overxpossed]

@@steevmsteevm Yeah, I meant, instead of aplying gain to parts of a signal, its peaks can be lowered. I don't think isn't the same but either, the opposite for too many reasons. Talking from the digital realm, not from recorded instruments (and just in general). I guess that any digital information which wasn't rendered is always recovereable because the editing of digital sounds is not destructive until rendered. I mean, there is no clipping in digital, I deduct it cannot be loss of data in consequence inside the digital context. What do you think? I'm just guessing among many concepts.

[@steevmsteevm]

​@@Overxpossed I can't remember if Angr covered this or not in his stream on the mathematics of sound, but you clip if you exceed the maximum resolution of the audio's bit depth. There's only so many values that can be represented in a finite set of bits (just like you can only represent 10,000 values in decimal using 4 places - 0 to 9,999). But you do get a lot more headroom to work with when using more than 16 bits. If you go above 0dB on the master, you will clip when rendering to 16-bit because everything above 0dB is clipped - that's the maximum value you can represent in 16-bit.

[@Overxpossed]

​@@steevmsteevm wow man... no idea it would be so exactly the same than in photography. When taking a picture, it clips when the light overwhelms the capacity of the sensels, which are like little cells where photons discharges their volt information into the camera's sensor. The camera sensor has a limited capacity, also measured in bit depth when converting the analog data into digital data. Greater the bith depth, greater the amount of light it can be hold without clipping. It's also measured in values of resolution, which is the amount of shades of chromatic tones and shades of gray, (also screens). I must watch that video.

[@Overxpossed]

@@steevmsteevm there is the difference between a Jpeg and a Raw file. The first one is already rasterised; the second one is just maths.

[@Gloomer2000]

It's always nice to see you talking man. But I never use a limiter on my master, I'm using Ozone :-)

[@steevmsteevm]

I'm guessing it has a limiter too, though presumably you don't need to use it?

[@Gloomer2000]

@@steevmsteevm No, I don't. Thnx

[@PeterLawrenceYT]

I mean if you're pushing your track into the limiter, it's not the limiter that's ruining your mix bruh.

[@steevmsteevm]

Yeah, and it's gonna be a mess when you render it out too (even without a limiter) if you're too hot on the master.

[@Music-tg5is]

The guy who said this about Fruity Limiter also probably asks users why they use Maximus instead of Soundgoodizer. 😂

[@steevmsteevm]

I always use Maximus with the A,B,C or D presets!

[@Music-tg5is]

@@steevmsteevm Exactly! You get the same results but with far more available control.