FabFilter

Sure you can ..

4 stems on audio-tracks
5 groups - one for each stem, plus a sidechain group with the output set to "No bus"

Do an aux-send from each of the audio tracks to the sidechain group, route the audio tracks to its individual stem-group, and feed the sidechain of the limiters on the stem-groups from the sidechain group ..

Has the added benefit of being able to adjust the limiting simply by changing the volume of the sidechain group ..

Nice idear - thought about it too!
but, i do post!
I have about hundrets of tracks that feed these STEM groups.
These STEM groups are routed to a print-master which has some comp/eq/saturation on it as well as a limiter (pro L2).
So i want this master-feed to control the stems - otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to me - but this is NOT possible to do with nuendo.
You just can't send a feed from an later stage in the signal flow to an early one...

My question, could you guys from fabfilter help me with this?
Would it be possible to handle the side chaining within you plugins, or even as "data stream" not as audio steam?

all the best

It can only be done properly either as Rune says or by printing an *unlimited* master and then using it to feed the sidechains. Think carefully about what you would get if you could actually go: Stem with active limiter on it -> Master -> Sidechain of limiter on stem. In fact it's in the manual: "To achieve this, use Pro-L 2 on the stem channel, while feeding the original (unmastered, unlimited) master to its side chain input".

So, either you "branch out" of your stems *before* limiting, then put limiters on that branch and feed them from the unlimited sum in the direct path (basically what Rune suggests), or you print the master in a first pass without limiters and then use that to feed the limiters in a second pass.

Note also that any other non-linear processing that you have on the master bus (you mention compression and saturation) would have to have the same sidechaining capability and be treated just like the limiter. There are plenty of compressors with an external sidechain input, but I can't even think how it could be implemented in a saturation plugin, and since distortion / saturation is, by definition, a non-linear process, you can't just put it on each stem and expect that the sum of the stems will be identical to having a single saturation plugin on the master bus.

This is all assuming that you aim is to be able to print separate stems whose sum will be identical to the master with a single limiter on it, which, as far as I can tell, is the whole purpose of the sidechaining capability of Pro-L2, but maybe you're trying to do something else?

Cheers,

Cabirio is correct - what you are asking will never work, even if feedback routing was allowed.

If you feed the sidechains of your stem-limiters with the output of a limited master, the sidechain signal wouldn't trigger any limiting. And calculating correct plugin-delay-compensation wouldn't be possible, since there is an "infinity loop" ..

.. so your best course of action is what Cabirio and i suggest!

Lots of audiotrack -> A number of clean stem-groups > route to new set of stem-groups with limiters AND aux-send to combined sidechain group > feed limiter-sidechains on the new groups with signal from sidechain group ..

However - if you *do* want to try out what you are requesting, you could probably set it up in Reaper; as far as i recall feedback routing is possible there .. but the results will be very unpredictable; in fact .. i fear the universe might implode ..

Thanks for your feedback Cabirio,
yeah you are right - staturation isn't a good example! So skip that.
But eq and compression is used that way already ... so the idear is just the limiting. The final limiter is more a safty. If it would limit, somethings would be wrong in the first place.

So, it is true, i would need to print the master just to use it for the second pass - which is a matter of time.
I usually just print once (realtime). Thats the final pass which will be only stopped if their would be a mistake. Or, if i have to live/direct mix to a videodeck (which still happens on HDcamSR), there is no second pass ;-).

Hm, so no, that function isn't quit or me than.

A good workaround would be to skip the HOST side chaining and have an own dataflow. Since the pro-l2 would just need to transfer reduction data, no actuall audio.
Would that be a solution for the Steinberg DAWs?

all the best

Hey Rune Borup,

"However - if you *do* want to try out what you are requesting, you could probably set it up in Reaper; as far as i recall feedback routing is possible there .. but the results will be very unpredictable; in fact .. i fear the universe might implode .."

Might try that, but don't blame me if it does! :-)) !!

thanks anyway for your time!!