LIMITER TWEAKS

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.