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Master Rig Limiter V3 in Wavelab Pro
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Master Rig Limiter V3 in Wavelab Pro

wavelab pro Jul 07, 2023

today we talk about

Master Rig Limiter V3 in Wavelab Pro

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we move onto our third video as we continuediscussing the limiter of the master rigin wavelab Pro but before we start Iwant to remind you that there's a linkbelow to the free content navigationguide which is an easy to navigatewebpage with links to all the content onthis channel and besides that in thenear future I'm going to begin addingtips and other bits of information thatwill only be available there you knowthings like simple steps that will getyou started and up and running quickthings that are in the videos but arewritten down in simple steps that serveas quick reminders when you needinformation down the road if you'reworking with programs like wavelab orCubase plugins or the cable guys shaperbox and many many other projects thatare in the works then I know you'regoing to find just like I have that thisis an invaluable study Aid and the otherthing I want to make sure you understandis that this is not a simple PDF this isa constantly updated page that has anyinformation that is new or anytimevideos are changed really anythingupdated and once you have it you willalways have the latest informationconstantly updated so if you haven'tgotten it already go to the link belowclick on it and save it to yourfavorites it's my gift to you and it'sabsolutely free Okay so let's getstarted so we're on the third video ofthe limiter previous videos we looked atthe balance in the transient area lasttime we looked at the harmonics area buttoday we're going to move on to theactual limiter area and we have twoareas over here the brick wall and themaximizer we're going to focus on thebrick wall and the first thing I want tocall your attention to is this outputarea and right now it says 0 DB and Ican turn this all the way down tonegative 20 DB I'm going to leave it atzero for the moment the first thing youwant to understand is when you enactthis limiter you are immediately cappingeverything at 0 DB you're tellingwavelab that at the point where thislimiter is being put in nothing is goingto go above zero DB now you can changethat and drive it down even further I'mgoing to show you what happens when wedo that but the only way you can getaround this capping zero DB to eitherbypass the module or bypass the masterrig otherwise this is stopping thesignal at 0 DB now let's look at whatthat really means I'm going to go overand bypass the master section completelythen I'm going to play my songif you look up here at the wave scopeyou can see we have lots of room inother words the Peaks from this bottomwave and the Peaks from this top waveare very far apart from each other if welook on the limiter itself the signalscoming in at around negative 19. but I'mgoing to start driving up the pre-gainon this wave I'm gonna turn the volumeway down for this experiment to watchwhat happens on the wave Scope when Idrive this upit's getting closer and in fact you cansee that now the Peaks are starting tocross let's take it up a little bitfurtheras you can see now the Peaks from thebottom wave and the Peaks from the topwave are completely overlapping eachother let's look at some other thingslook down here on the level meter lookhow much in the red we are this istelling me I'm at plus 10 right nowlet's look over at the limiter thelimiter is pretty much peaked it'sshowing a huge amount of gain reductionbut right now the limiter is out of thechainWatch What Happens the minute I turnthis limiter onlook at thatsee how the levels have now been stoppedthere's no longer any overlap betweenthe top and the bottom in other wordsthe waves are being stopped at zero DBif we come down to our peak level meterin the master section we can see thatit's no longer in the red and now if wecome down to this output and I startturning this down from zero DB let'stake it down to negative twosee how much space it's now put inbetween the two waves and this is whathappens when you start decreasing theoutput on the limiter turn it down alittle bit morethere's a full 6 DB in reductionand you can see what the limiter isdoingokay now I want to just kind of brieflytalk about a concept that we hear allthe time but I want to kind of give yousome kind of point of reference to go onand that's the concept of the 64-bitfloating point the professionals outthere of course this won't be anythingnew to them but for others that hearthese terms all the time whether it's a64-bit floating point or the 32-bitfloating Point what exactly does thatmean and what exactly is that offeringit's a fact that wavelab allows us towork in this 64-bit floating Pointprocessing environment I want to giveyou a couple of examples to look at tohave some kind of point of referencewith all this stuff it will helpsolidify the whole concept of limitingin general if I take my song and I startplaying it bring this volume down alittle bit more this song is rightaround negative 18 DB if you look overin our Master section if the meters arereading at negative five look at ourwave scope lots of space up here at thispoint I've taken everything out of thechain there is no more limiting there'snothing in the chain here now except theaudio playing through wavelab this pointI'm going to go up to the pre-gain ofthis wave and I'm going to start turningit up you can see this wave increasingdown hereI'm going to keep goingyou can see that the wave is prettysolid now in the picture I'm going tobring this volume back down a little bitif you look over on our Master sectionwe're in the red there's still not a bigdifference in the way things sound asfar as wavelab goes I'm going to turnthis volume down and turn this up evenmorethese meters are reading close to 30plus DBin other words everything is just beingmaxed out completely but the question iswhy does it still sound the way itsounds there's hardly any difference infact there is really no difference atthis point between what the wave soundedlike when it was way below the zero Markto what it sounds like now when it issmashing all the meters every display iscompletely solid how can this possiblybe well the answer is the 64-bitfloating Point processing many times Itend to think of this as like having awhole stadium to work on your audio inand then when it comes time to put itout in the real world I used to think ofit like a closet but it's really not Iwouldn't say that restrictive but asmall room yeah maybe we're gettingcloser to that analogy now let me drivethis point home just a little furtherwith this example I'm going to take thiswave as it is right now with everythingit just Peak to the Max and I'm going torender this off so I rented off a copyof this so I'm going to take my originalwave and start bringing it back into thenormal realm againand then I'm going to take this newlyrendered solid block of sound bring thatback into the Montage let's go and putit on different tracks so now they lineup because they're identical in lengthobviously one is visually different fromthe other right let's go ahead and usethe meta normalizer and we'll balanceout the actual loudness of these I'mgoing to make both Clips at negative 18and make things easy to hear I'm goingto change to a reference trackso now before I play this let's talkabout this real quick a second agobefore I did the rendering and did allthe stuff I'm doing here both this wavethat was the original and thiscompletely smashed solid block as longas they were being played in wave labthey sounded pretty much exactly thesame it's obvious when looking at themthat they are not the same but as far aswavelab was concerned the actual soundof these two examples as long as theystayed in wavelab they were the same nowlet's listen to what they sound likeafter one has been rendered off tobasically what would happen out in thereal world somewhere here we arestarting with our original examplehere's our identical example that's beensmashed[Music]is there a difference yeah there'sdefinitely a differenceand the difference is that as long asyou're working in the wavelab 64-bitfloating Point environment things thatwill sound totally destroyed out in thereal world can very easily still soundperfect in the wave lab environmentbecause wavelab can handle it sometimesI joke to myself and think what a worldit would be if every device out therehad 64-bit floating point from our cellphones to our car stereos any place thatyou could possibly listen to music ofcourse the reality is if everything elsehad 64-bit floating point out there theneverybody would be driving it up to themax of the 64-bit floating point andthen we'd have a new level of loudnessWars that is until they start making128-bit floating Point available andthen we get to start the whole cycleover again so just as we're leaving thispoint that you can drive things up inthe 64-bit floating processing area oncewe turn our limiter back on if I bringthis back into the chain and I play thesongand I start driving it upnow fairly quickly we start hearing thatdistorted sound because with the limiterin place 64-bit float point or not oncewe hit that ceiling of zero or whateverwe bring this down to that's all theroom we have and so just finishing up onthe controls we have here on our brickwall side we have the option to set therelease time or we can select the Autorelease and this master big limiter isdesigned to look for the best releasetime so this Auto release is actually avery good option besides that if yourstereo field is off or you just want tomake sure that both sides of the stereofield are affected the same way you havethe stereo link button and then you havethis over sample button of course thisoption for over sampling has become moreand more popular in limiters but onceagain what is this doing let me show youa basic example here the concept ofoversampling is that it's looking fortrue Peak information I'm going to leavethis off for a second which makes thislimiter focus on digital Peaks if I playmy song now I've set my song so that Iknow I'm clipping again if I go overinto the master section meter I have anoption right down here it looks like alittle teardrop and this stands for thetrue Peak analyzer right now I have thisoff and if I look at the meter it'sholding at the zero Mark and it's doinga good job of holding these meters atthe digital peak of zero but if I goahead and turn on this true Peak meternow I can see my meters are actuallyreading over the zero mark because nowthis meter is actually reading true Peakinformation which sometimes may go overthe zero Mark so the limiter is workingthe ceiling is set to zero but I'mgetting this true Peak information whichis telling me that actually it's notholding back and keeping things at zeroon the other hand if I go over in an actthis over sampling option and then comeback and recalibrate my true Peakinformation now I can see that it isalso holding the true Peaks at zeropersonally I always keep the oversampling on that's your choice I have awhole set of experiences when it comesto True Peak maybe at some point we'llmake a video on that to talk about itbut anyway you have the option for theover sampling to try to attack the truePeak information and we're going toleave it right there all right it'sgoing to wrap it up for today as alwaysif you haven't grabbed your navigationguide be sure to grab that from the linkbelow this video it gives you quick easyaccess to all the content on thischannel ever growing and free to usecontent is in order being updatedcontinually just another resource tohelp you find your way out there so Isaved the maximizer for the next video Iwanted to dig in a little bit deeper onwhat the difference is between themaximizer and the brick wall buthopefully at this point you've gottensome idea of all the different settingson this limiter and you'll have a littlemore confidence the next time you go touse it which is the goal of every videoI put on this channel to give you alittle more confidence when you're usingyour software as always it's great tohave you guys here and I'll see you onthe next video

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