Waves L3. If you want your mixes to go to 1. Waves' new mastering limiter might be the weapon you need. Sam Inglis. The Multimaximizer version of L3 can act as a mastering equaliser as well as a multi- band limiter. Here, I've gently boosted the upper- mid frequencies and cut the low mids.
The Multimaximizer version of L3 can act as a mastering equaliser as well as a multi- band limiter. Here, I've gently boosted the upper- mid frequencies and cut the low mids. Sometimes new technology gives us new ways to screw things up. Take, for example, the digital mastering processors that appeared in the '9.
I suspect that many users will be perfectly happy with the simpler L3 Ultramaximizer. it'll leave the bass alone and achieve the. Waves' L3 is an impressive. In this brief tutorial you will learn about the differences between the Waves L3 and L3-LL Multimaximizer plugins and see how to apply them to enhance your.
In the right hands, they could add that last bit of sparkle and polish that would make a finished mix sound like the work of a professional. In the wrong hands, however, they could turn a bad mix into an unlistenable master, eliminating any trace of dynamic variation. And when record company executives got their heads round the idea that these devices could be used to make their CDs louder than the competition, even the best mastering engineers found themselves under pressure to deliver flatlined mixes. In this quest for ever- louder CDs, two of the most popular weapons have been Waves' L1 and L2 peak limiters, which the company call 'Ultramaximizers'. L1 and L2 have two basic aims in life.
The first is to increase the subjective loudness of incoming digital audio, without introducing clipping or other obvious distortion. The second is to dither the final output from your digital audio workstation to 1.
CD mastering (see box). The genius of L1 and L2 lies in their ease of use. There are only two major controls: Threshold sets a level below 0d. B to which the input signal is limited, and automatically applies the same amount of make- up gain. Output Ceiling then 'scales' the results so that the output signal never exceeds the Ceiling value.
The net gain in loudness is thus equal to the difference between the Threshold and Out Ceiling settings. Waves say that with most material, it should be possible to achieve at least a net increase of at least 6d. B before distortion and other side- effects become obvious.
I've sometimes found this claim a bit optimistic, but even so, there's no denying that L1 and L2 can achieve some impressive results. Equally, there's no denying that they can be pushed much, much too hard. The Next Level. The hardware L2 and the software L1 and L2 have been around for quite a while now, and have been facing increasingly sophisticated competition. Waves' answer is L3, a clever multi- band implementation of the same concept.
Like almost all Waves processors, it's available both as a TDM plug- in for Pro Tools (in which case you need to run it on an Accel card) and a multi- format native plug- in, in each case supporting sample rates up to 9. Hz. In L3, the incoming audio is divided into five frequency bands.
Linear- phase crossovers are used to do the splitting, so unless you actually apply limiting, the output signal is identical to the input signal, albeit delayed by the limiter's lookahead value of 8. The main controls are still called Out Ceiling and Threshold, and they still apply globally: whatever you do to the individual bands, their combined level is limited to the Threshold value, before being scaled to hit the Ceiling. The more basic L3 Ultramaximizer lacks the detailed control offered by its bigger brother. The more basic L3 Ultramaximizer lacks the detailed control offered by its bigger brother. The clever part of the design lies in the relationship between the peak detection and the attenuation.
Like its sibling the Multimaximizer, the low-latency L3-LL Ultramaximizer delivers top quality level maximization and peak limiting, controlled by an intuitive. L3 Ultramaximizer – Sold as a bundle (L3/L3-LL Ultra, L3/L3-LL Multi). The L3 Ultramaximizer is a special edition of the L3 which is included with Diamond and. L3-LL Multimaximizer and Ultramaximizer The L3-LL Multimaximizer and Ultramaximizer feature minimum. Get your Waves L3-16 Multimaximizer Plug-in now and spread.
Conventional multi- band limiters split the signal into separate frequency bands and then limit each band independently. Here, however, the level in all five frequency bands is summed using a patent- pending algorithm Waves call the Peak Limiting Mixer. If, at a given instant, this sum exceeds the Threshold value, L3 works out the amount of attenuation that is needed and intelligently distributes it across the different frequency bands. By default, the bands that are attenuated the most are those that contain the most energy, but it's also possible to instruct L3 to concentrate the gain reduction in frequency bands where you think it will be less noticeable.
The result, at least in theory, is that you can apply more overall limiting with fewer audible consequences. Waves say that we can expect their PLM technology to be put to different uses in future products. There are two versions: the simplified L3 Ultramaximizer, which is now included in both the Platinum and Diamond Bundles, and the full- blown L3 Multimaximizer, which is a Diamond- only affair. Buying L3 separately gets you both versions.) Ultramaximizer won't frighten off anyone who's used to the simplicity of L1 and L2; apart from the Threshold and Out Ceiling sliders and the dither settings, the only user controls are a pop- up list of preset Profiles and a single Release control. Multimaximizer, by contrast, adds a graphical display and a set of controls for each of the five frequency bands, along with a pop- up list of Master Release characteristics. Even by Waves' high standards, the ergonomics of Multimaximizer's interface are impressive.
Despite the number of parameters on display and the unfamiliar nature of settings like Priority and Separation, it's easy to take everything in at a glance, and nearly all the parameter changes you might want to make can be achieved using a single mouse movement in the graphical display. The display itself is a model of elegance and a very useful analytical tool for fine- tuning your settings. It is animated to show the gain reduction as it is applied across the frequency spectrum. An orange line follows the gain reduction in real time, but with most material, this moves too fast to give you a clear idea of what's going on, so Waves have added a 'smoothed trail'; this is a blue shaded area that follows the orange line, but decays much more slowly, so you can see where gain reduction has been applied. There's also a dark red peak hold line, which shows the maximum level of gain reduction that was applied at every point in the frequency spectrum. Superimposed on these traces are visual representations of the band- specific controls.
Each band features a coloured diamond which can be moved in both vertical and horizontal planes. Horizontal movement adjusts the crossover frequency between a band and its immediate neighbour, whilst vertical movement adjusts both the Priority and Gain of that band. All In A Dither. Both the Ultramaximizer and Multimaximizer versions of L3 include dithering features that are exactly the same as those in L2, except that the options are chosen from pop- up menus rather than by clicking to cycle through the choices.
You can set L3's output resolution to 2. Waves' proprietary IDR algorithm, and select the amount of noise- shaping that the dither noise should have. It's all exactly as straightforward as it sounds. Priorité À Droit. The concept of Priority is at the heart of L3's design, and it's these controls that allow you to shape the psychoacoustic element of the process. By increasing the Priority of a band above zero, you're telling L3 that the material in that frequency range is important, so when it encounters a signal that exceeds the Threshold, it will apply proportionately more gain reduction in the other bands and less in that band. Conversely, if you give a band a negative Priority value, L3 will take the opportunity to dump proportionately more of that band's content when it needs to achieve a certain overall gain reduction.
The Gain controls are more conventional, doing exactly what you'd expect — increasing or decreasing the level of each frequency band in a fixed rather than a dynamic fashion, allowing the Multimaximizer version of L3 to act as a five- band, linear- phase equaliser as well as a peak limiter. Moving the coloured diamonds in the graphical display, or the double- arrow controls in the pane beneath it, adjusts the Gain and Priority together. The Separation control allows you to vary the behaviour of the peak detection algorithm. At the default of 1.
As you lower the Separation, each band's detector begins to receive signal from the other bands as well, and at a value of zero, each band's detector receives the full- bandwidth signal. This makes L3 behave more like its single- band predecessors, although you can still adjust the Priority settings in order to distribute the gain reduction unequally across the different bands. Each of the five frequency bands also has its own Release time parameter, which is a big help in achieving more transparent results. Typically, you might want a slower release time for bass frequencies to prevent distortion, with a tighter response higher up the spectrum to allow L3 to react more naturally to transients such as snare hits.
You can manually set the release time for each band, but for most material, you're better off choosing one of the four programme- dependent settings from the Master Release pop- up. These all scale the release times across the frequency spectrum, usually with a slower release at the bass end, but also vary them to a certain extent in response to the programme material. Of these, ARC is similar to the auto- release algorithm used in L1 and L2; Warm is more programme- dependent at the lower end and stays closer to the manual settings in the higher bands, while Scaled does the opposite and Aggressive provides the tightest of the four release characteristics. The choice of Master Release algorithm makes more difference to the sound of the results than almost any other single parameter in L3. For rock and pop music, I usually preferred the ARC or Aggressive settings, while softer material often suited the Warm preset. Another feature that's intended to help fine- tune the settings is the ability to solo individual bands. This allows you to check which instruments in your mix fall into which frequency bands, which can be handy.
System Requirements.