How to Limit Your Mixes and Masters: Ultimate Guide to Peak Limiters

Understanding how peak limiters work and when to use them is critical to the final stages of music production, mixing and mastering. Learn limiting’s best practices and hear the differences between Waves’ limiter plugins.

Waves’ limiter plugins featured in this video:

0:00 Introduction
0:27 What is peak limiting and when should you use it?
2:10 Limiter plugins compared
2:51 How to use a limiter
3:38 Audio example #1
4:51 Audio example #2
6:54 Listen: Waves L1 vs. L2 vs. L3

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[ErreGamer]

Finally, quality content from Waves, not just kids talking about how "their" 4 month career made them choose "this" plugin xD

[oxeyemusic]

Thanks a lot for using my song "Reflection" for this! Great advice :)

[elliotsimon]

I’ve been using the L2 for the last 50 years!

[DaveLopezMixing]

Thanks, Dan. I've used the L2 for years but never knew you can link the thresh and out. And, honestly, never paid attention to the link button between the two. Granted, I use it primarily for mastering, but I see how linking the two parameters can help in a mix environment. Thanks for the tip!

[faz]

For everyone: the song is “Reflection” by oxeye

[brianvassallomusic]

Perhaps one of the best if not the best explanation on how to use and to be careful not to ruin the sound, when using limiters. Please consider doing the same thing on the other tools, like, compressors, exciters, saturation, eq, etc ..

[bisaular]

this is my MOST used plugin for years now

[MrMikeyGlasses]

The lovely Dan Cooper. Talented teacher and possibly the reason De-essers were invented! 🤓

[Freogeteknet]

Another exception to the "last in the line" rule is when you want to controll agressive spikes in the source material before it goes into another compressor. For me often used on snares and kicks. For this I allways link the the thresh and ceiling to not raise the volume into the next plugin.

[parboilrice]

Looking out for more of these. This video was super useful.

[vessray]

Thank you for the great video overview! I hope that you will also create a detailed video on L3-16 and L3 Multimaximizers. ☺️

[michail_]

Thank you for the explanation. I use it, but I didn't always understand how to work with it. Now I understand it better.

[xyanide]

You'd think these would get little interface reworks over the years but they look identical since I first touched them in like 2006. Great video btw!

[johnjhonny]

L2 is still golden. no gain reduction. just use that color

[Crossfire]

Great video!
However, I'm using the FabFilter Pro-L2 (which also has the True-peak limiting function).

[storiesreadaloud]

I like when these types of videos use a good track in the examples

[AlexeySolovievMusic]

Amazing video Dan! Thank you so much for all of your amazing and informative videos

[rojoratatatata]

You coincidentally used the exact limiters I needed a tutorial on. Can't thank you and god enough

[emiel]

Great video, Dan. I own some Waves plug-ins for my iPad Pro inside Cubasis 3 (available as IAP). They’re awesome. I would love to see more Waves plug-ins for iPad. Whether it’s an IAP for Cubasis 3 or an AUv3, I will like it.

[bach]

Never knew what the arc meant thanks for eating that up