FabFilter User Forum
Pro L Distortion on Vocals?
I have recently downloaded the Fabfilter Pro L limiter. After trying it out on a few songs, I have noticed distortion in some of the vocals when used as a mastering limiter on the Output bus. It seems to come in at odd places, maybe one or two spots in the whole song. I have tried different presets. For example one track is just Vocals/Acoustic guitar/Bass and I tried all of the Acoustic presets and the all do it at the same spots in the song. Increasing the lookahead seems to help, but I feel like there is no real "safe" setting that I can be confident in and that it could be fine in some parts and then distort at others. For example, the acoustic song above, it only distorts in two places, and to my ear they do not seem ant louder than other peaky parts in the vocal.
Full disclosure I am new to Limiting on the Master Buss so maybe I am just doing something wrong or my expectations are wrong. I really want to love this limiter and have heard great things about it, but it just seems I can't push it very far without getting audible distortion
-Jim
Besides increasing lookahead, you can also try to increase the attack and release settings. What level of gain change are you applying?
Cheers,
Thanks Frederik. I was applying about 5db of boost. I was expecting to really be able to push it without hearing distortion, but I guess that is not how it works. I really like the sound of this Limiter. I just need to learn how to use it better to get the results I am after. Seems a very small boost works best.
It totally depends on the source material how much gain you can apply without getting distortion. You can also play around with the different limiting algorithms, as some will be better suited to your source material than others.
Cheers,
I slam stuff into this limiter all the time with minimal distortion. Pay close attention to your attack/release times. A higher value for attack and/or a lower value for release will give you more obvious distortion. Just raising the release value to like 1000ms or higher should totally eliminate your problem.
Getting better results now. Thanks guys. I just purchased it along with Pro C!
I have a similar problem with vocal, especially with bassheavy tracks. But it´s not only with pro L 2 but with every limiter I have tested. Using shorter attack times and longer release times can solve the problems a bit. It´s always a compromise.