The 'Secret' Transparent Limiter Nobody's Talking About

So Air Music Tech has some nifty little gems tucked away in their plugin suite.. lets talk about one of them.

What’s up Forum

So let’s dive into a little gem that I stumbled upon a few months ago doing some sound design work.

I’m sure you’re familiar with compressors and limiters, right?

Good, well a transient designer is kind of like a compressor and an expander in one.

What it does is either attenuate or accentuate certain transient elements in a signal.

Without boring you with the science, if these get out of control, you run into a major problem.

Clipping!

A nifty way to prevent clipping is to put a limiter on the last channel in the FX chain.

Well, Air has a BEAUTIFUL limiter hidden inside of their Air Transient designer.

You can see from the image above how the channel is clearly clipping over -0dB BUT with the single instance of transient designer everything is controlled.

But everything is squashed and distorted, right?

oh contrary!

If anything, nothing audibly changes.

seriously. even when driving the channel is super hot.

it sounds the same as it was.

And I’m sure you’re also asking.

But Air makes a limiter already?

Yeah and it’s limited .. (pun intended)

I did an A/B comparison just to show the difference in sound.

So here is the raw version without any effects whatsoever.

and then let’s add an instance of Air Transient Designer

Did you notice any difference?

Nah

Let’s compare that to what air LImiter gives us Again here is the raw:

and here is what Air Limiter is spitting back out at us.

Immediatly a difference.

Now, of COURSE, the air limiter is a very good limiter for mixing purposes. HOWEVER

pick your role.. are you a mix engineer or a producer?

Personally, I use both, however, the transient designer is used when I want to preserve the sound of something and limit its dynamics.

I mean the thing is almost invisible…

So I’d rather the mix engineer work on matching the mix dynamics to the mastering engineer.

NOW if the shoe is on the other foot, then the Air limiter does have a set of functions like mono summing and release that come in handy on mixing projects.

These DO get the mix louder and allow for a bit more undistorted gain boost.

But sometimes things just KNOCK when they clash..

Use Transient Designer to keep the dynamics in check. (OR MPC300 emulation but that’s for another day!)

Here is the kit/Midi to the loop above (MPC format)