Mixing Audio, 2nd Edition

17

Limiters

A true limiter has one critical task: to ensure that signals do not overshoot the threshold, no matter what. Often it is sudden transients and peaks that we limit. Limiters have many applications outside mixing: they are necessary to protect PA systems, to prevent one FM radio station from intruding on the frequency band of an adjacent station, and, in mastering, to help maximize loudness. In mixing, the task of limiting peaks is, when the final mix is printed, essential where signals must not exceed 0 dB before being converted to digital or bounced to integer-based files (or any other digital media).

We already know from chapter 16 that a compressor can be configured to behave much like a limiter. To make a compressor a true ...