Fruity Limiter

[Kagetori]

What the heck is this thing exactly, and do you use it?
I recently figured out the mixer doohicky and found the Fruity Mixer thing, which is always there in the corner by default. Anyways, I turned it off and my music sounded... more clear. From what I understand so far, all it does is make music sound more... um... muffled in an attempt to even out the volume, like, make lower sounds higher and higher sounds lower so it won't get staticy from too high volume, but it really seems like more of a bother than a help, so is there something I'm not really getting or what?

Put short; Is the fruity limiter the reason I can never get certain things to pop out (mostly drums and bass) like everyone else is able to? Cus' that's really limiting me.

Edit- Here's a thing,
http://soundcloud.com/e9p3/night-bird
at 1.18 - 1.20
dafaq man, hear the volume suddenly go up when all the sounds trying to fade out. It sounds terrible!
There are plenty of other examples, but that ones pretty clear to hear.

[colortwelve]

Protip: Don't put any sort of limiters, compressors, or maximizers on your master channel; you do that in mastering, which is done from the rendered .wav file.

Protip: Set aside a mixer track, route your drums to it, and put a Fruity Limiter on it to compress your drums. Do it right, and you get Tombstone snares :3

[Legion]

Protip: Don't put any sort of limiters, compressors, or maximizers on your master channel; you do that in mastering, which is done from the rendered .wav file.

Protip: Set aside a mixer track, route your drums to it, and put a Fruity Limiter on it to compress your drums. Do it right, and you get Tombstone snares :3

Tombstone snares (and kicks) consist of EQing and soundgoodizer as well. Lots of soundgoodizer. Did I mention soundgoodizer?

But yeah, pretty much that first protip. Not that you can't stick a limiter/compressor on the master channel, but it's a bad idea in the long run.

[Foxtrot89]

'Nother pro tip: Click "File/new/new from template" and find the blank/empty template. After which, every new project you start will be completely empty. Perfect for people like me who hate the default sounds, and easily forget that the limiter is there. Too many projects of mine were delayed by me forgetting the limiter was there and I mixed with it in the fx chain. Best to just use the blank template and only ever add what you need.

Edit: Also, if I remember proper, the soundgoodizer is just a preset kind of bundle of effects. (Compression/EQ.) I don't typically use it since it's more precise to create your own fx chain and not be limited to the one knob and four/five buttons. Use it if it works for you, but it's hardly the be all end all effect for drums.

[Legion]

Edit: Also, if I remember proper, the soundgoodizer is just a preset kind of bundle of effects. (Compression/EQ.) I don't typically use it since it's more precise to create your own fx chain and not be limited to the one knob and four/five buttons. Use it if it works for you, but it's hardly the be all end all effect for drums.

Soundgoodizer is just 4 Maximus presets and a wet/dry knob. An elaborate marketing technique, but a useful one.

[Foxtrot89]

Soundgoodizer is just 4 Maximus presets and a wet/dry knob. An elaborate marketing technique, but a useful one.

That's what it was. I remember reading that a ways back, but blatantly forgot about it. All I really remember of it was, in my infinite wisdom, dropping it on the master track of all my songs at the time. I really ought to dig those tunes up. Pure trash, I'm sure.

[Artimeus]

Huh, I just learned something about Soundgoodizer. I knew it was linked to Maximus, but I figured it was just the 'poor man's' version. But, before getting too far off topic.

Yeah, I do not recommend leaving that limiter in the main mixer track. When I start a new broject (c wut i did thar) I make sure I open up a completely blank template with nothing loaded. That's just my thing; I think others can speak to use their own project templates.

A limiter is a device, or in this case, a piece of software, that allows audio signals below a selected input to pass through it unaffected while attenuating the peaks of stronger sounds that exceed your selected maximum limit. In effect, it "shapes the volume" of your sounds.

[Kagetori]

The magic of not having the Fruity Limiter on is pretty great.
Although I don't use any kind of filter or whatever now, here are two tracks,
one has the limiter on, the other doesn't. They're both EXACTLY THE SAME, only with that one small difference (except the high part of the drums or whatever). Can you figure out which one doesn't have it and which one does? It's an easy test~!

http://soundcloud.com/e9p3/wip-midnight-cresent

http://soundcloud.com/e9p3/midnight-crescent-another-wip

SO HAPPY I AM NOW~

MY LITTLE REMIX: FRUITY LIMITER IS ANYTHING BUT MAGIC.

[Watashig]

I think this from Alex S. might slightly apply here, though I think I'm beating the dead horse.

http://lavenderharmony.tumblr.com/post/ ... er-channel

[Kopachris]

I have a question: why is putting a limiter/compressor/soundgoodizer/anything on the master track a bad idea? (And I mean when you're done/almost done mixing, not at the beginning.) How is it any different from mastering a rendered .wav file (unless you're using incompatible software for the mastering)?

[colortwelve]

I have a question: why is putting a limiter/compressor/soundgoodizer/anything on the master track a bad idea? (And I mean when you're done/almost done mixing, not at the beginning.) How is it any different from mastering a rendered .wav file (unless you're using incompatible software for the mastering)?

I think maybe I'm biased on this one, because I'm fairly close to a professional mastering engineer, who tells me that trying to master my own work is a bad idea. The whole point is that, if you're it actually having your tracks mastered for you, it makes the engineer's job much easier if you haven't tried anything with your track already - it's easier to work with something that's uncompressed than something that's poorly compressed.

[vladnuke]

Which is why I have colortwelve do all the mastering work.

It's tottaly not because I don't know how to do it properly.

*lying applejack face*

Now shush while I go fill my master with sg's.

[Kopachris]

ma

I have a question: why is putting a limiter/compressor/soundgoodizer/anything on the master track a bad idea? (And I mean when you're done/almost done mixing, not at the beginning.) How is it any different from mastering a rendered .wav file (unless you're using incompatible software for the mastering)?

I think maybe I'm biased on this one, because I'm fairly close to a professional mastering engineer, who tells me that trying to master my own work is a bad idea. The whole point is that, if you're it actually having your tracks mastered for you, it makes the engineer's job much easier if you haven't tried anything with your track already - it's easier to work with something that's uncompressed than something that's poorly compressed.

Okay, that makes sense. But if you're doing your own mastering (because you're too poor to hire someone else and no one wants to volunteer), is there any drawback to working on it at the same time as everything else? Maybe start mastering when you think you're finished composing and mixing, but do it on the main project file so you can more easily adjust other stuff if there's either something you can't fix with mastering or the mastering itself throws something off.

[colortwelve]

I'd imagine that, when working on mastering a track that you've already listened to hundreds of times, the mastering process would be extremely mechanical, so I guess you could toss some master-channel effects when you're rendering your absolute final version of a track... But I couldn't say with authority.

[Friv]

I use limiter for my sidechain compression as well as a gain/ceiling plugin. The sidechain compression works well and is very easy to do, and it helps to lower/limit the volume when i already have the volume knob automated.

[soup2504]

Protip: Don't put any sort of limiters, compressors, or maximizers on your master channel; you do that in mastering, which is done from the rendered .wav file.

So even if it's clipping, don't put a limiter or anything on it?

Hah, fuck. I always put a Fruity Soft Clipper on the master track if it started clipping

[Whitetail]

Putting a compressor on your drums directly = bad pony, don't do that (well in MOST cases)
Bussing your drums to a second channel and compressing that on top of leaving the clean signal while EQing the frequencies you actually want compressed on the bussed channel = good pony, come get belly rubs

[colortwelve]

Protip: Don't put any sort of limiters, compressors, or maximizers on your master channel; you do that in mastering, which is done from the rendered .wav file.

So even if it's clipping, don't put a limiter or anything on it?

Hah, fuck. I always put a Fruity Soft Clipper on the master track if it started clipping

That would be why you always lower the master volume by at least 3dB when you start on a track; it gives you plenty of headroom and lets you both prevent clipping and keep a lovely dynamic range.

[Nikki-Layne]

Putting a compressor on your drums directly = bad pony, don't do that (well in MOST cases)
Bussing your drums to a second channel and compressing that on top of leaving the clean signal while EQing the frequencies you actually want compressed on the bussed channel = good pony, come get belly rubs

Holy shit, that sounds really cool. I wish I had learned this earlier. :/

[Whitetail]

It's really helpful to get the kick and snare to pop through the mix more, I often bus the two to an auxiliary channel and scoop out the mid ranges so it compresses the lows and the highs to help get them to punch through more but it's obviously not just limited to that - it's rather helpful to be able to compress specific frequency ranges.

[Nikki-Layne]

it's rather helpful to be able to compress specific frequency ranges.

Incredibly helpfull! You have no idea how much you've helped me out by sharing that information!
Thank you, SO MUCH!!!

[Captain Ironhelm]

One of the ways I use it is to make sounds trippier. Usually I automate the filter cut-off and the resonance. White-noise woosh=easy peasy.

[ph00tbag]

I've always preferred not to mess with anything at all ever on the master track until the full mixdown is done. Simply put, if my track is clipping, I lower the mixer channels getting routed to the master rather than lowering the master.

But my tracks rarely clip in the master, because I mix pretty low to begin with. I usually mix my kicks to peak at -6 dB or so, and everything else is quieter.

[Magnitude Zero]

Putting a compressor on your drums directly = bad pony, don't do that (well in MOST cases)
Bussing your drums to a second channel and compressing that on top of leaving the clean signal while EQing the frequencies you actually want compressed on the bussed channel = good pony, come get belly rubs

Holy shitballs I wish I'd thought of this earlier.

Bookmarking this thread. So much good info.