Thanks for your thoughtful response! I'm pretty sure these algorithms are quite involved and are doing a combination of things behind the scenes, and I see your point with regards to the nature of this plug-in. I've achieved best results by using Limiter 6 on buses and using the modules strategically across different groups. This enables me to reach final loudness in the mastering stage more easily, using loudness maximizer -type plug-ins without them breaking a sweat.

A TDR Maximizer sounds very intriguing indeed! Although I suspect it'll be later rather than sooner considering your vinyl related project. I'm also sincerely hoping that you'd expand your work in the field of awesome sounding and aliasing free saturation next. But if/when you start thinking about designing a loudness maximizer, please consider checking out the plug-ins I mentioned – my plug-in folder is full of slow-acting limiters that can really kill the groove in my mixes by flattening everything and pumping unmusically (when used irresponsibly )!

This makes me curious - what vinyl related project are you referring to?

Also look forward to more quality plugs from tdr. Saturation yes! The Deedger could also be developed further, I'm dreaming of a sort of expanded deharsher (or naturalizer) from the tdr team - that would be a treat!
::
Mads

A few snapshots of our recent efforts at the lab

Wow - you are amazing developers!

If this can help understand the "magic of vinyl" (if this indeed is a thing and not just a sweet idea), this could make a foundation for "vinyl coloring" in the digital domain. That would be some addition to a tdr color box (just dreaming).
::
Mads

Oh it is a real thing, now in early evaluation phase.

We had absolutely no realistic idea of vinyl until we began looking into it just 2 years ago.
It started with a surprising revelation from an active disc mastering engineer. He had been using Nova GE since years, replacing his Neumann mixer's filters. With hundreds of records successfully cut through it. He asked for a dedicated version of Nova.

This world fascinated us.

In lack of any experience with the matter, and the largely unreliable documentation around the subject, we had to start at zero, reading all docs and manuals we could fine, talking with specialists, etc. We reproduced the full process in great detail, inside software, also as a way to prove a successful learning to ourselves. Out of this all crystallized an attractive product-concept.

I only fear Dan Worrall will have to make a feature film length movie this time!

What a project, wonderful how things can grow in form from almost nothing. Because you as a team are willing to invest lots of time and energy and (if I'm not mistaken) meticulously attention to detail in both research and development - to take it from something that piqued your interest and let that grow into something special and useful.

Looking forward to experience how it ends up - and of course to Dan Worralls transcending 91 minutes walk-through.

Exciting news!
::
Mads

Hi, just bought this today, late to the party I know:-) Really liking it! Will be using it for mixing.
I had a very dynamic female vokal track where I was struggling with hf content and thought I'd give Limiter6 a go. Used compressor, hf limiter and limiter.
Just messed around with the compressor settings and ended up with the broadcast one. I really like it, but seeing it's perhaps not intended for this use case, is there something I should listen out for? Sometimes it takes a while to recognise all aspects of a sound.

Thanks for any insights!

Edit: the hf limiter in relative mode did exactly what I was hoping for. Smoothed out the sound in a beautiful way! Really great.

Well, the crossover and the phase rotation will ever so slightly ”delay” the bass frequencies, leaving some more space for the high frequency transients. It gives the low end a different shape that’s hard to describe. I’m sure the effect isn’t as drastic on female vocals, but try it on a kick drum track or a bass instrument and see if you can hear it!

The HF limiter in relative mode is in my experience pretty similar in its action to how the classic dbx 902 de-esser works and it’s one of my favorite de-essers! I usually have limiter6 with just the HF limiter engaged on my vocal bus where it’s just catching just some stray consonants that come from summing multiple vocal tracks, even if they’ve been de-essed individually.

Hi, thanks for the detailed answer! So the phase rotation will perhaps do something similar to the phase rotation knob in Slick eq? I’ll listen to some low freq material, thanks!
Limiter 6 will also be on buses, and with some work maybe replace the hw Fatso I’ve been using on my 2 bus, using the hf limit and clipper with a soft knee. Cool about the Dbx de-esser, the hf limiter was actually what got my attention in the first place. But what a great sounding dynamic power house this is! With my favorite ui’s in the business. I’m now a happy total bundle owner:-) thanks TDR

Huh, I basically just use it for the hf limiter and a super-soft clipper from a 'tape setting' someone recommended probably somewhere earlier in this thread. The only downside is that the peak metering becomes a bit less accurate than the YouLean meter I have after it, which always agrees with the final Reaper render readings.

How / were do i choose , broadcast , for the compressor..?

I'm i missing something ? I get Alpha, Sigma, Leveler and Nova

Hmm..

you have not latest update, it was added not so long time ago. Broadcast is below them

This

YES...

A simple update was all i took :D

Now it's time to explore the 'Broadcast' mode..

Any tips there ?

Thanks in advance

+1 -- i get the concept, and want to love it, but have not found a successful use for it yet

to oøt's query, educated guess, but yes, with the addition of minimum phase 3-band comp to evoke an Orbane optimod? vibe

sigma gets heavy use here though, preset to default to 18 and 80 attack and release -- then tune the release t bounce with the track -- must have an internal hi-pass in the detector? as you can be very aggressive and smacky with the ratio and threshold and 80ish ms release and the bass won't fart uncontrollably -- on a drums n bass buss especially (not the genre, per se)

the hf limiter in relative mode is beautiful -- I do wish it had have a mid-side option -- or maybe my pea brain just can't grok how to use the "stereo diff" mode

oh, and ohlhorst/tdr's de-edger is beautifully surgical for deesing when you want to maintain the transient response

Every module in Limiter 6 can be set to Sum/Diff operation. There's a "00" button on the module's toolbar.

We're not worthy! We're not worthy! We're not worthy! We suck! (sorry Mike Myers super-fan.... ya think!?)

I am gobsmacked that I did not clarify this with you years ago! All this time I never dared tread into the 00 zone: I took the verbiage of the manual to mean that attenuating the side channel somehow affected the "width" of the stereo image:

"Stereo vs Stereo + Width Mode
The small Stereo vs Stereo + Width button switches between standard stereo operation and stereo + width operation.

The latter is somewhat equivalent to traditional stereo sum and difference processing, but with a slight operational difference: Additional controls appear now both offering control over the stereo content (as before in stereo mode) and the stereo width, whereby the width is set relative to the stereo control. This makes sure that changes made to a stereo parameter do not affect the stereo width (only the width parameters do)."

I still can't make heads or tails of that even now reading it fresh. But if it is M-S in practice, then this is epic!


completely o/t, but as I have your ear for a moment, the ballistics of all your controls have a nice weighted feel to them, with the notable exception of grabbing a node in the spectrum analyzer of NOVA -- very sluggish/laggy feel and always a buzzkill (crave eq's spectrum nodes being the gold-standard ime)

keep up the great work fellows, and look forward to digging into the vinyl beast after the outlaws leave town

I still kept the broadcast comp on my lead vocal for my last mix. (A huge project with an acoustic recording of 34 songs.. Three musicians in the same room, very dynamic music and vocals) I tried several techniques with hardware and software to make my life easier and the vocal sound better. But lim6 with broadcast comp and hf limiter in relative mode stayed till the end:-) + parallel processing and other stuff.

Besides "broadcast" are there any other new features in any of the plugins?

Hey Fabien, would you be able to provide some more insight into the broadcast compressor module with regard to best use practices? I re-read the entire manual again last night but couldn't find anything in-depth about the broadcast compressor.

As an aside, I think the clipper module is absolutely phenomenal, particularly the open and LF modes, in conjunction with tweaking of the separation knob.

Feature request:
- Constant gain (from smart:limit), where you can set a loudness level and every change you make will adapt to that loudness level. TDR Limiter has equal loudness bypass, so you have to press the bypass button after every change you make. I prefer the former. Then you can hear exactly at what point the audio begins to sound harsh / bad as the auto gain works in real time.

Question:
Can the recovery knob be viewed as a soft or hard limiting knob?
Low recovery values (i.e. 10ms) --> hard limiting (immediate/pumping)
High recovery values (i.e. 200ms) --> soft limiting (smooth)

No idea what they are doing in detail.

A logical issue is that a realtime autogain modulates the signal, and thus introduces distortion on its own. This is why all our nonlinear functions' auto-gain methods are explicit. i.e. they only change audio when user clicks/demands it. If they'd do it on the run, they would inevitably distort the audio itself, and the decision making that builds on it. Like a leveller at the end of the chain.

That's a clear no go to me.

This is different to our EQ auto-gain mechanisms, which are fully linear in operation and never modulate (i.e. distort) the audio that we wanted to preserve in the first place. Hence, they can be implicit, i.e. realtime/on the fly. But a nonlinearity must know the input signal and its history to be predictable, i.e. there is some learning time involved, possibly an infinite amount if the audio constantly changes. We do this, but without modulating/damaging the audio along the way! Our products observe the signal in silence, and then apply equal gain correction whenever user clicks EL Bypass or EL Trim.

In some sense, yes. Recovery almost directly affects the resulting density. BTW it's called recovery because the release is highly adaptive, releasing transients much faster than steady state content, independently of the recovery setting in use.

The knee and various modes also play a role of course.

Wouldn't linking the input gain control with the output gain control solve 98% of the problem? So when I raise the input of the limiter with 5db the plugin output is reduced with 5db.

That would certainly help me more than the equal loudness bypass. Maybe it's already possible, but i didn't see it before. Maybe it's even possible to link those controls in my DAW, i will check.

It's all about finding the sweet spot; at what point is the audio deteriorating.

Not really. Once GR comes into play, it would make monitoring gain lower and lower, without any good reason.

Did some further testing with the smart:limit in trial mode.
The constant gain functionality is basically linked input and output and this indeed does not work properly; as soon as gain reduction takes place the output volume is lower and lower.

So, forget about my feature request. I thought Sonible was smart...

Smart:limit sounds very nice though, very transparent, but TDR Limiter 6 GE can sound exactly the same if you leave the brickwall functionality off in the limiter. Or when using the clipper in Limiter 6 GE, be sure to use a soft knee. Same results, just different user interface.

I've still been enjoying this plug-in and its flexibility for many different uses. Now that I have a macbook with the M1 Max processor, I can very liberally use many instances across many tracks and that got me wishing for a total rack-style channel strip from TDR. You could even call it Rack No 6!

Just keep the modules from limiter 6 and add:
a) A 4-band SlickEQ-module with two fully parametric bands and a low and high shelf/bell (SSL channelstrip style user experience)
b) A saturation module with a selection of preamp -styles, a calibration knob and a compensated pre-emphasis section for which the UI could be straight up ripped from Kotelnikov's FDR -feature.
c) A module for high-pass and low-pass filtering.

This would be the dream for me! I really love Limiter 6 and the SlickEQ M for their flexibility and sound quality. Can't seem to gel with SlickEQ GE as I often find myself hoping for an extra band or a way to change the Q-values per band. The harmonics also are quite subtle though of course technically impeccable. Somehow I also prefer the #6 's Alpha and Sigma styles over Molot GE, even though I can get them close enough. I just tend to get option paralysis with Molot while the compressor module in Limiter 6 is quite easy to dial in.

I think people at this point have gotten used to an effect rack style workflow and it does have its workflow benefits. Maybe there would also be some technical benefits, like not having multiple loops of up/down-sampling in between plugins? Conceptually, it's already treaded water so I guess it goes a bit against Tokyo Dawn's philosophy. A man can always dream!

put Nova GE in front of the TDR limiter and you have it all!

Nova GE in dual-mono is just

Wow, just am rediscovering this gem! I used it often for it's "True Peak limiting without altering the punch / transients" - feature as the last plugin on the masterbus. I do trap beats (in Ableton), so I'm always a sucker for softclipper plugin which sounds close to the FL Studio softclipper, which somewhat defines how a those big 808 (bass) and kick should sound like, when getting softclipped. It's a pretty distinct sound / crunch and I tried so many softclippers out there and it's really hard to get "that sound". I found that acoustica audio's "fire the clip" plugin works really well, but the CPU usage and also introduced latency (even when using the zero latency version) is just a show stopper and also I used Limiter 6 (just for the true peak option) after it anyway. I then tried matching fire the clip and using Limiter 6's Clipper modul and got so close, that I don't feel I need to use fire the clip anymore. My only gripe would be, that Limiter 6 introduces still quit some latency (except for the no latency mode of course). I consider it still superior to fire the clip, as it uses noticeably less CPU, but my only wish for an update of Limiter6 would be, if there'd be something between the 12ms latency in "no latency mode" and the 360ms latency when using any of the other modes. Not sure if that could be improved / done somehow.