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-- Waves L3 - Multi-Band Auto-Summing Limiter

Waves L3 - Multi-Band Auto-Summing Limiter

http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=1529

Wow, this thing looks like it could solve a lot of my mastering problems =P

So far we've got 1 "Wow" and 1 "Woah" for this product

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=201038

Im not there yet to understand what is so amazing about this tool. Can someone explain why this plugin is getting a lot of attention?

thanks.

Because for the last ten years there is a loudness race going on. Your tune must sound AT LEAST as loud as the "opposition".

Just check for yourself. If you got cd's from the good old days (steal some from your parents), load them up in your favorite audio editor. Look at the waveform. Fluctuates a lot, there is still dynamics going on (some of them don't even reach near 0 dB). This was good...

Now take a modern commercial cd, and load it up. Watch and weep. You can't see much of a waveform anymore, it resembles more a rectangular block. Even if you zoom in a lot, you can't even see a nice round waveform (as it should be most of the time for normal music), but you'll see like a razorblade cut the tops off. That's brickwall limiting.

Normally, such limiting sounds very bad pretty quickly (in the good old days, brickwall limiting was used either as a special effect, or just to chop extreme tops off). The Waves L series Ultramaximizers were one of the first, but most importantly, one of the most popular limiters that allowed novices to do limiting without too much punishment.

In other words, you can limit quite severly, without most "normal" people (as in they just listen to music for fun, or as background) noticing any degradation in sound quality. Of course, the L2 even got better, so you can squash even more (and as you removed rogue peaks, you can increase the loudness again).
Now the L3 is a further improvement that can adapt it's work area to several bands. In simple words, most people will be able to get their music even LOUDER with the same "quality".

The way I see things going, it saddens me very much (as I see most people going crazy for the L3, sorry but 80% of you doesn't probably know how to use it for "good"). It's not only the melody or the arrangement that carries the emotion in music, but also the dynamics. Listen to classical music for once, and listen how they can work up to a certain climax with dynamics alone.
How can you expect to achieve the same result if your calm parts are as loud as the energetic parts? In the end, we'll probably end up listening to a square wave...

I know I'm ranting each time this topic comes up, but I'm losing hope each day that passes.

My girlfriend was ripping an Avril Lavigne cd she bought the other week, and I was astounded to see the rips of the track. "Rectangular block" would be a very accurate way to describe it.

While I agree with most of what you've said, I don't think that comparing EDM to classical is really all that useful. When Beethoven was composing Moonlight Sonata he wasn't thinking "well this is good, but how is it gonna sound at the club?"

Re: Waves L3 - Multi-Band Auto-Summing Limiter

quote:

Originally posted by Sean Walsh http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=1529 Wow, this thing looks like it could solve a lot of my mastering problems =P

veeeery dangerous thing to say, I betcha five dollars that a pro ME can outclass you any day on an L1 while your'e using the L3

it's mostly about skill and not the tools you use

Vizay...true...unless it has some kickass presets!

quote:

Originally posted by Digital Aura Vizay...true...unless it has some kickass presets!

haha

but still, kickass-skills > kickass-presets

quote:

Originally posted by Sean Walsh My girlfriend was ripping an Avril Lavigne cd she bought the other week, and I was astounded to see the rips of the track. "Rectangular block" would be a very accurate way to describe it. While I agree with most of what you've said, I don't think that comparing EDM to classical is really all that useful. When Beethoven was composing Moonlight Sonata he wasn't thinking "well this is good, but how is it gonna sound at the club?"

I was mentioning classical music, as it's one of only the music styles were macrodynamics (as in the loudness differences between several parts of the song) still play a major role.

Believe me, if you did a good job at mixing, and mastered it well (without squashing) it will still like everything else in the clubs. 90% of the time, there's limiters in the PA installation too (which role is normally to protect speakers, but lately they're being used for the same thing as in mastering, loudness). You'll squash your mix with your mastering limiter, and that squashed mix will be flattened even more due to processing done at the club install.

Besides, there's not ONE and only club. Most clubs sound radically different. In that optic, there's not much difference with Beethoven. Don't you think he might be worried how his pieces would sound played out in a certain room? In the end, the aim is to make it sound good everywhere. And therefore, a clean piece of work is the best solution. If they want to destroy it afterwards, it's their problem. But if you deliver a heavily mutilated work, that damage can't be undone in later stages.

This is even more true for radio, where there are huge broadcast processors squashing everything down. There have been experiments done, with unmastered songs sent out to different mastering houses that were known to have radically different methods of working. There were very dynamic masters returned, and very "commercial" square waves too. The different masters were played over the radio (so passing one of those processors). It's really an humbling experience. At least the dynamic masters had still some life in it, the square waves, well... very fatiguing.

That's why I have to agree with Vizay here, skills make the difference. In sound, presets are a very bad method of working (unless you need to work quick, like in the advertisement business). Each song is unique, so needs unique settings. Sure some presets offer "instant gratification". But in my opinion, try to work from scratch. If you can work up your way to good settings, it shows that you know what you are doing. Once you are at that stage, you can use presets, as you will know why that preset will make it sound good, and speed up your workflow.
If you always use presets, you might like it already. Who says that that will be the best result you can get? Presets were made with a certain type of song (or even with a certain song) in mind. And like I said, each song is unique.

again thy hits it right on the spot, every song is unique, I dunno why I didn't mention that as a reason for not using presets but it's darn true anyway.

the real reason behind the ultrasquashed songs theese days is called the mastering mafia (wich are 4 or 5 of the most hired ME's on the market). They started this squashingtrend and it has resulted in that all ME's have to squash the mixes to infinity just to get the job and it has turned into an evil spiral unfortunatley :/

you can find a really good(or maybe horrible, depends on how you look at it) example of their work if you check out the latest red hot chili peppers album, it's almost a perfect definition of squashed to infinity.


well anyway, feels like I'm drifting away from the subject here...

[correction]

the mastering mafia are three guys, read more _here_

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