Re: Ohne Ruhm
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 3:09 am
Yeah, I know about ZCM and I've used it myself, and your description about how it works is spot on.
I was talking about the type of compression you're doing as its "competitor". Limiting is compression with a high ratio (e.g. > 8:1) and fast attack, and brickwall limiting is compression with a very high ratio (e.g. > 20:1 up to infinite) and very fast attack, down to 0 ms. There are dedicated brickwall limiters designed for transparent sound. Doing limiting with a generic compressor plugin is possible but needs a fair amount of practice and personally I prefer using a limiting plugin so I don't have to think about it as much.
Article about why limiting doesn't need to be bad (from someone who is very outspoken against excessive loudness, interestingly): http://productionadvice.co.uk/brickwall-limiters/
I used the free JB Barricade limiter but just now discovered that Barricade Pro has been released for free since. It has an impressive set of features, it's basically three limiters at once, but requires some knowledge of the various things it does and I did have to read the manual. It's available for download in this bundle (which contains a few other nice things, too): https://web.archive.org/web/20130608183 ... vst_jb.htm
I used Barricade Pro just now on my "Ocean of Love" where I originally didn't push the gain very far.
Original: http://www.songfight.org/music/ocean_of ... er_ool.mp3 - 1 dB master gain, limited to -1 dB to hopefully avoid inter-sample clipping. Has a mean dynamic range of 10-12 (according to the very useful Meters/dynamics_meter JS plugin shipped with REAPER).
New: http://static.music-jk.net/attic/ocean_of_love+5.mp3 - 5 dB master gain, limited to 0 dB because Barricade Pro has built-in support for handling inter-sample clipping. Has a mean dynamic range of 8-10 which is okay. Sounds pretty much identical to the original when level-matched, at least to me.
If you like I can write some more about compression and limiting but I guess it'd make sense to take it to the help+howto forum or sfbase (side note: the artist pages haven't auto-updated in about three years). I could have sworn I wrote about this already on the wiki but I guess it might have been JB's wiki which seems to be gone.
I was talking about the type of compression you're doing as its "competitor". Limiting is compression with a high ratio (e.g. > 8:1) and fast attack, and brickwall limiting is compression with a very high ratio (e.g. > 20:1 up to infinite) and very fast attack, down to 0 ms. There are dedicated brickwall limiters designed for transparent sound. Doing limiting with a generic compressor plugin is possible but needs a fair amount of practice and personally I prefer using a limiting plugin so I don't have to think about it as much.
Article about why limiting doesn't need to be bad (from someone who is very outspoken against excessive loudness, interestingly): http://productionadvice.co.uk/brickwall-limiters/
I used the free JB Barricade limiter but just now discovered that Barricade Pro has been released for free since. It has an impressive set of features, it's basically three limiters at once, but requires some knowledge of the various things it does and I did have to read the manual. It's available for download in this bundle (which contains a few other nice things, too): https://web.archive.org/web/20130608183 ... vst_jb.htm
I used Barricade Pro just now on my "Ocean of Love" where I originally didn't push the gain very far.
Original: http://www.songfight.org/music/ocean_of ... er_ool.mp3 - 1 dB master gain, limited to -1 dB to hopefully avoid inter-sample clipping. Has a mean dynamic range of 10-12 (according to the very useful Meters/dynamics_meter JS plugin shipped with REAPER).
New: http://static.music-jk.net/attic/ocean_of_love+5.mp3 - 5 dB master gain, limited to 0 dB because Barricade Pro has built-in support for handling inter-sample clipping. Has a mean dynamic range of 8-10 which is okay. Sounds pretty much identical to the original when level-matched, at least to me.
If you like I can write some more about compression and limiting but I guess it'd make sense to take it to the help+howto forum or sfbase (side note: the artist pages haven't auto-updated in about three years). I could have sworn I wrote about this already on the wiki but I guess it might have been JB's wiki which seems to be gone.
