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Comments
A maximizer is just a limiter, @tja. Normalizing is another thing.
4 and 6 both fail completely for not keeping phase aligned - can't believe this is true.
The others vary slightly, but the short (excerpt) version is of a rather specific type, so hard to decide which one to prefer without the source mix.
Hey, mr. @tja: connactic is right: maximizing as we use for “loudness maximizing” is just a limiter with a threshold. It’s not a matter of opinion, like it’s not a matter of opinion 2+2=4.
@telefunky, spot on: 4 is squashed (not only loud but squashed) and sounds very bad, 6 sounds better but both mess with phase: that’s perhaps the voice in 4 sounds so wrong. 2, on the other hand, sound really great, and 5 as well. Listening on a pair of NS-10, though, with a KRK sub.
Where is this spoiler? Not seeing in in the OP.
EDIT: nevermind, found it.
Well, just found the spoiler, will refrain from further comments.
Interesting comparisons. Kind of hard to get too deep into things since they weren't all processed the same, but it seems like most people tended to prefer (or dislike) similar versions. Would love to do something similar here in my mastering studio, but not sure I want to shell out the cash for all the apps since I doubt I would use them beyond this.
2 is the best, really crisp and clean. Liked also 5 and 3 to minor extent.
Maybe we should start from scratch, with a new song , now that we are getting the hang of this thang.........see if we get the same results........
That would be really useful........i was thinking that maybe you were the one to take this on..............
Indeed Maxima version provided in first post was 6dB boost in AUM -> -18dB thresholds!! Squashyyyy indeed! So for sure compared to the other lounder but not good.
I ve just fired a test and my settings was: yes avoiding gain for sure and then threshold from -10dB to -14db to taste (more -10 dB) - Preset La donna.
@FredAntonCorvest were all 6 apps run parallel in AUM ?
In that case the 'wobbling' of the stereo image I perceived (in Maxima and Grand Finale) may have it's reason outside the (mastering) app.
As mentioned I can hardly believe this would have slipped through your own tests.
@tja I hope this answers your question from above.
It seems to me that the standalone apps should start to focus on being able to work on multiple tracks. Like the way you can work on multiple tracks in a daw for a cohesive album.
Let me look into it some more this week, maybe if it’s not too much cash out of pocket for me I can put something together to put a few apps head to head in a more controlled setting.
The source mix is available for download at the start of the thread, in the second post.
Interesting!
Thanks for the interesting discussion. A couple of notes:
it's pretty tricky to get exactly the same processing from each app because they all have different controls, the only thing I really wanted to test was the limiting, so all other options were turned off where possible. In most apps you can disable the modules you are not using (EQ, stereo imaging etc) so this is what I did.
Initially I wanted to try and approach this in a numerically controlled manner, and just add 10db of gain to each app, but this gave widely different results, for example adding +10db of gain in Pro L2 does not give the same result as adding +10db of gain in Final Touch. So in the end I had to try and match the waveforms as best I could, but since each app processes things differently this is not really possible - especially since many of these apps take the "black box" approach and hide controls from the user, so we don't really know what they are doing under the hood.
But knowing that the results are not going to be a perfect match doesn't stop us being able to compare results. I wanted to listen out for distortion particularly, but you can also hear if transients have been altered, and also how the limiter is working in relation to the track.
Finally about sample number 4: this one didn't have any gain control, so I added the gain going in to the channel in AUM and then used the preset recommended by the developer. This resulted in way too much compression, sorry that was user error on my part. The reason this caught me out though is because I think of a limiter or maximiser as having a gain control and a brick wall approach (hard knee set to 0db) which only processes the signal that goes above the clipping threshold, but this particular option works more like a compressor with a lower threshold setting, meaning it affects the audio more like a bus compressor than a brick wall limiter, hence the audible pumping.
I redid sample 4 after speaking with Fred, this time I removed the input gain and tried various threshold settings between -10 and -14. I settled on around -13 as the best match to the other waveforms, but I still think this is acting more like a bus compressor than a brick wall limiter. Typically a brick wall limiter would not have a threshold control.
In a brickwall limiter, when the threshold control appears (Izotope Ozone!), it’s exactly equivalent of the usual gain control (FabFilter Pro L and most others). So a threshold of, said, -13 db in Izotope Ozone is the same operation of dialing 13 db of gain in FabFilter Pro L, @richardyot!
P.S.: did you replace 4? I’m still hearing some pumping...
OK thanks for the clarification. I can confirm though that dialing +10db of gain into Pro L2 and setting the threshold control in Maxima to -10db gives completely different results. I will post the waveforms and you can compare for yourself.
Yes I replaced 4. Like I say, I don't think it's acting like a brick wall limiter, more like a bus compressor. Maybe Fred can chime in and we can get to the bottom of this.
Perhaps either because of the said differences between algorithms (Ozone and ProL will also give different results with same amounts but Ozone is def. a brickwall limiter) - or perhaps you are indeed right and Maxima is more a compressor than a limiter (the developer is watching and can answer if it’s the case).
You beat me to it!
Here are the wavforms, so you can see that at -10db Maxima isn't adding as much gain as the others, so in the end I set the threshold to -13 for a closer match: