Hi, everyone. I’ve got another freebie to share. This time, it’s a limiter and it looks like this:
Looks great, sounds even better 😎
I won’t describe to you how it sounds, but I can say that it can be loud. I envision its place at the end of the signal chain as a mastering limiter, but I can also imagine it to handle individual tracks.
Features:
- 3 stages: limiter, soft clipper, hard clipper
- gain from 0 dB to +24 dB
- ceiling from 0 dBFS to -24 dBFS
- adjustable limiter attack time from 0.02 ms to 250 ms
- adjustable limiter release time from 10 ms to 1300 ms
- adjustable hard clipper release time from 0.1 ms to 50 ms (with limiter off) or 1 ms to 500 ms (with limiter on)
- fixed hard clipper attack time
- optional soft clipping stage adjustable from 0% to 100% (0% = off)
- optional HPF for limiter’s side-chain with cutoff frequency ranging from 15 Hz to 2 kHz
- limiter on/off switch (when off, signal passes only through the clippers)
- Dual GR meter (limit / clip)
Maybe I could also add that this plug-in is, as usual, in VST format (however still Windows only), comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors with and also without GUI … and that’s it.
Enjoy 🙂
Note: If you are longing for the behavior of v1.00 just flip the switch to ‘Clip’, set ‘SC’ to zero, and adjust ‘R2’ to taste.
Sender Spike 
Your vst are awesome !!
Please make them resizable (too small on 4k monitors)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can imagine they are tiny on 4k screens. I’m working on it. Thanks for feedback 😉
LikeLike
Very good limiter, already on the level of Loudmax (v1.32, because not every version is good) and Kilohearts Limiter, my two favorite free limiters. It’s just a little hard on the low frequencies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I noticed that, too. Though, I played with HPF stuck in front of it and I liked what I’ve heard…hm. How hard did you push it? Loudmax looks fantastic, feature-wise SN05-G cannot compare (no oversampling, no ISP detection/treatment, no dither, SN05-G is just a really fast hard knee brickwall across the whole spectrum, and that’s that). Anyway, thanks 🙂
LikeLike
Thank u so much for your vst!!! Great work!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks 🙂
LikeLike
Wow, they keep coming! I’ll be getting it. I only use your tape sim now, it’s my fave! And I use yr channel strip a lot now. I have another fave channel strip from Tone Empire which I dig. The only 2 I bother with now. I go to my Klanghelm compressor usually, but I enjoy yours.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks 😉 Btw. which Klanghelm comp do you use? I didn’t click with the freebies, I liked what I’ve heard, though.
LikeLike
I got their free castrated version of the section which is as I’m to understand is an ape of a tube compressor used during the 50s. I’m slower to excrete cash on anything theez days…divorce, getting my pay garnished for 2 years..but I got brave and bought their full compressor, which has the 50s one along with 2 other personalities. Their prices are cheap. Was gonna worry about me GF slapping me cadaver around the room once she found out later, meh. It’s called “MJUC”. This isn’t at the expense of your compressor at all; yours is great! Have I commented re the new limiter? Working with a 59-year-old brain here; 4give me if I’m repeating myself, hahaha. I just got it and I must still need to learn to dial it in. Giving it more than 2 on the Gain dial causes “wrong” distortion. Mind, I’m a hobbyist, and I know nothing re gain-staging n all that. It’s something I’m doing. It is often the case with higher-end gear that its precision makes it sensitive and tricky to use in the beginning. Its sweet little robot face is SO CUTE. Makes my capacitors and resistors go thumpity-thump! 😁
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ad Klanghelm – I though so. I was considering that 3-in-1, too. As for limiter, rest assured that the problem is not in your receiver 😆 I was slacking on testing things (today I finally checked – on plot it distorts like crazy, then again all limiters do). Anyway, as it seems, I made this one simpler than it should have been. Just as a side note, purely for illustration — with -1dBFS ceiling, I managed to push it up to 9-10dB gain with GR ca. 5-7dB on a transient heavy material when I got into obvious distortion territory (few dB below it was noticeable tho). Longer release times slightly mitigated that problem, but at the expense of “dulling” the sound (like any compressor would, I guess). It seems to me that its behavior is somewhat program dependent. All in all, to make it short — I’m currently looking for a viable solution to this. The core is ok, but as a whole it seems unfinished. Thanks for feedback 🙂
LikeLike
Great limiter! Hope you release the source code soon
LikeLike
I know I said I would, but this will have to wait. It’s another thing to take care of and I’m slowly running out of resources (read money). Sorry 😳
LikeLike
Dont compare this to Loudmax…. keep it open sounding as it is right now…loudmax chokes the sound. Low end must be open sounding as it is right now. Like it!
LikeLiked by 1 person
To be honest, I still don’t know how Loudmax sounds. I compared just the features that are listed at its web page and, at that time, SN05 was only v1.0. My main yardstick during the development was Pro-L (Sonnox, Waves, No6, etc. — nothing quite compares especially when we talk about transparency / loudness) and some YT videos of Bettermaker mastering compressor (though they can hardly make justice to its sound — still, I could get some rough picture). So, no worries — sound-wise, SN05 will stay as it is as I’m pleased with its sound too 😉 After all, as I’ve mentioned in release notes to v2.10, I already uninstalled even the Pro-L. Anyway, thanks very much for your feedback 🙂
LikeLike
I have a question: As far as I understand, a clipper is like a waveshaper, or a saturation with a threshold. So what does the release time do?
LikeLike
When you look at the “schematics” in the manual, the signal flows as follows: ->look-ahead limiter with optional HPF->soft clipper (simple sigmoid waveshaping func)->brickwall limiter. Thus, to answer your question, R2 is technically the release of a brickwall limiter, which is just a VCA compressor with infinite ratio and insanely fast (almost instantaneous) attack. This fast attack is what makes it into brickwall and it also has the side effect of making it essentially a hard clipper. There’s no attack time to speak of, and, with short release times, the transients/peaks get simply chopped off (no smooth gain riding), which results in distortion. So, to make the sound less distorted, you can adjust (increase) the release time.
LikeLike
Thanks for the explanation! So it is a limiter, but with zero attack and release it’s essentially a hard clipper, and with non-zero release it only “clips when entering it”. Is this right?
LikeLike
Yes, you summed it up perfectly 🙂
LikeLike
I’m not an expert of these things, but I wonder is it possible to create a soft clipper in similar way? Maybe through all the adjustable parameters (ratio, release, knee) and some program-dependent design, the result can be better than using a simple waveshaper. This is just my guess 😉
LikeLike
Neither am I 😆 , so just off the top of my head — waveshaping function is not time dependent, i.e. it’s just instantaneous clipping along a curve, compressor/limiter on the other hand is time dependent gain attenuation and to make it clip requires particular settings (ultra fast attack comes to mind). It could be probably made to emulate a (sophisticated) waveshaper, though I suspect it would be quite complex and “heavy” (performance-wise ?). I have also noticed that compressor/limiter distortion has a different flavor to it than simple “function” clipping (I took a huge amount of inspiration from Bettermaker mastering limiter — https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=aZ3-uEIE4-k — whose soft clipper sounds like a simple “function” waveshaper to me, but I could as well be hugely off the mark). All in all, I’m quite certain that what you say could be pulled off, I just think that it would be in the area of diminishing returns. But as I said, take my opinion with a grain of salt 😉
LikeLike
Really like your plugins a lot! Wanted to try out the newest x.21-versions. But they dont show up in Reaper. Like recommended i installed visual studio 13. But they still dont show up in Reaper. At the same time the x.20 versions work perfectly fine. How is that even possible? best regards
LikeLike
Beats me
There was no change that should have such effect. Did you try clear cache / rescan? Other than that, I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. In any case, thanks for feedback.
LikeLike
For what ever reason two days later it worked!
sorry for wasting your time! Sometimes i really hate computers!! Really like your “Tape Recorder” for glue and smoothing transients and “VCA Compressor” is very tasty sounding and versatile! Great stuff, good work!
LikeLike
Phew! Great, I was really scratching my head. Well, these are the mysteries of digital world, or as I like to say even a computer is just human 😀 Anyway, thanks for info 🙂
LikeLike