If you use a limiter to bring up the volume of a track, bear these few principles in mind. A slower attack will leave the transients of the music a bit more in tact, but at the cost of higher distortion. Live’s Limiter does not have an attack control, it only has Lookahead.
The shorter the Lookahead, the slower the Limiter responds. This means more transients get through and there’s a greater likelihood of audible distortion.
If keeping distortion low is a high priority, you may be best off leaving Release set to Auto.
With this setting, the Limiter automatically determines the release time based on the source material. This tends to produce a smooth response with fewer artifacts.
Turning Auto off allows you to manually adjust the Release time.
With lower settings, you may find that you get greater apparent loudness and a bit more bounce at the output. But once again, this generally comes at the cost of more distortion.
