Introduction to FabFilter Pro-L 2 limiter
FabFilter
Hi, and welcome to this introduction to Pro-L 2,
a major new update for the FabFilter mastering limiter
Pro-L 2 adds new limiter styles such as Modern, or Aggressive, new display options like this
“Slow Down” mode, loudness metering to conform to new broadcast standards, and support
for multi-channel surround formats up to 7.1, plus Dolby Atmos 7.0.2 and 7.1.2 formats for the AAX version
Let’s start at the bottom, where we now have a True Peak Limiting button,
when this is turned on Pro-L 2 will catch inter-sample peaks even without any over-sampling for the audio path
The over-sampling options have also been beefed up, so you can now oversample all the way
up to 32 times the project rate.
Of course, these higher rates will require a reasonably fast processor to keep up,
but they’ll eliminate aliasing even with the fastest most aggressive settings.
So, let’s click the metering options and choose the new Loudness mode.
We can now see peak levels, or true peak when the TP button is turned on… plus short term,
momentary and integrated loudness meters to the right, and we can choose which of these
is displayed on the readout below, and click to the right to reset and restart the integrated measurement.
We can also pick a target level such as EBU R-128 at -23 LUFS, or -14 LUFS, ideal for
most streaming platforms, or a suggested -9 LUFS for CD, with a nod to the loudness wars.
But before I start to push the gain up to my target, I’m going to first enable 1:1 mode
in the output section, now when I push the input gain, the output gain is attenuated
by the same amount, and we can hear exactly what the limiter is doing when it starts to bite,
with no distracting increase in volume.
The metering still shows the levels before the output attenuation, however, so we can chase
our target level on the loudness meter, and keep an eye on true peak levels.
And the peak meter changes color to warn you that 1:1 mode is enabled and that these
aren’t the actual levels emerging from the plugin.
I’m using the new Modern limiting style, which is doing a great job of preserving the
punch and snap of the drums, even though we’re hitting it with some fairly significant limiting.
If you want you can turn on the Audition Limiting button to listen to just the delta signal,
and hear the difference between the limited and unlimited signals.
And while we’re here, notice the new option to filter DC offset from the input signal.
But of course, just because we can go loud, doesn’t mean its always a good idea:
I’m going to set a custom target level of -12… and back off the gain a bit, this is a good
compromise setting that will work well on all platforms, and this relatively small drop
in the target level makes a huge difference to the amount of limiting required.
Other new limiter styles include the Safe style, which prioritizes no distortion above all else,
partly through automatic control of lookahead and attack times.
Safe style would be a good choice if you need to control the very loudest fortissimo passages
of an orchestral recording with minimal artifacts, here we see it taming the peaks of my voice-over track
On the other hand, you might want to try the new Bus style on sub-groups or individual
channels within your mix.
This style is designed to sound fat and punchy rather than transparent.
Pro-L 2 also provides an external side chain input, which allows you to apply brick wall limiting
to a full mix, while splitting it into multiple stems: if the limiter side chain
is listening to a full mix you can limit each stem individually, and when you sum the stems
the result will be brickwall limited.
The final new limiter style is called Aggressive, and was created with more electronic styles in mind,
though of course, you’re free to try it on anything you like.
This style can go really loud if you want, while still retaining a fat, punchy low end.
As with version 1, there are actually two different limiters working in tandem under the hood.
The brick wall behavior comes from a very fast, aggressive limiter stage, which we can
tune with the lookahead knob, while the attack and release parameters mostly affect a slower,
gentler stage, and we have separate control over the stereo linking for each limiter.
Often it’s good to have little or no linking for the fast Transients stage, and full, or
nearly full linking for the gentler Release stage, but linking issues becomes more complex
when working with surround formats.
Again we have separate linking controls for both limiter stages.
I can adjust them both at the same time by holding Alt, but now the first half of the
knob introduces linking between just the stereo pairs such as front left and front right,
while the second half of the knob progressively links front and rear as well.
If you want to include the center channel, to link the whole front wall, press the little
C button in between the knobs, while the red LFE button below will include the
low-frequency effects channel as well.
We’re currently running the display in the Fast mode, which is the same as version one.
The new Slow display mode is the same but half the speed, and we saw the Slow Down mode
in the intro, but Pro-L 2 also adds a new Infinite mode, which doubles the horizontal
scale each time it reaches the end.
If you reset the display before the start of the song, as I did with this instance here,
it’ll build up to show a loudness graph for the whole song, or even a whole album if you leave it running.
As before you can choose from a range of different interface sizes, or run in full-screen mode,
or you can use the compact interface without the graph, and the help menu at the top provides
a detailed manual or contextual help hints that pop up when you hover over a control.
That’s all for now, thanks for watching.
FabFilter Pro-L 2 is now available at
https://www.fabfilter.com/shop/pro-l-2-limiter-plug-in
Dan Worrall introduces FabFilter’s highly improved limiter plug-in: Pro-L 2. He explains the new limiting styles, true peak limiting, loudness metering, en much more.
FabFilter Pro-L 2 will become available on December 5, 2017 for EUR 169, USD 199 or GBP 149 at https://www.fabfilter.com/shop . Existing FabFilter customers can purchase or upgrade to FabFilter Pro-L 2 with attractive discounts by logging in to their online user account at https://www.fabfilter.com/myaccount
Read more about FabFilter Pro-L 2 at
https://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-l-2-limiter-plug-in
The Introduction to FabFilter Pro-L 2 limiter video was embedded from Youtube channel “”. Video source
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