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One trick that I know to get loud mixes (although I am certainly not a fan of the recent trend where everyone is trying to make a piece as loud as possible) is to cut the peaks of the audio first and then apply the limiter.

I Know of two ways to cut the peaks, the first is to use a clipper which will truly cut the peaks but may introduce some distortion if one is not careful and second I could just use a limiter which will just bring down the volume of the peaks.

Which method will get me the best result, that is a clean master that also has the potential to become loud after applying a (possibly second) limiter?

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    You''re kind of asking the wrong question here, because any half-decent modern mastering suite does something that's somehow neither and both of the above, at the same time. Plus if you get one with a LUFS meter & true peak, you don't have to worry about your output, it becomes almost set & forget. All you have to listen for is noticeable crushing.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 28 at 13:27
  • @Tetsujin why not just post this as an answer? Looks good to me.
    – John Belzaguy
    Jul 28 at 19:26
  • Don’t go for a loud mix. Go for 14 LUFS, which can be a challenge to make a mix quiet enough to be at 14. Then put in a limiter to make sure no peaks are above -1 dBFS. Then your recording will be compatible with the majority of streaming services.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Jul 28 at 23:48
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    @JohnBelzaguy - OK, went for it. It is heavily influenced by my own working method; I guess it could be more generic, but then I wouldn't have the pictures in logical order explaing things.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 29 at 9:49

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You''re kind of asking the wrong question here, because any half-decent modern mastering suite does something that's somehow neither and both of the above, at the same time. Plus if you get one with a LUFS meter & true peak, you don't have to worry about your output, it becomes almost set & forget. All you have to listen for is noticeable crushing.

Here's my usual rig, IZotope Ozone, which is pretty 'smart' at setting up a decent first guess at a mastering process - it's not actually intelligent, so it can make some drastic errors if your input track is truly horrible, but otherwise it really leaves you to just do some final gentle tweaks.

Click any for full size
This is how it 'guesses'…

enter image description here

It then dials in some EQ & also some dynamic EQ, which is like a multiband compressor. It's not really doing much here because there's nothing wrong with the track.
If it thinks your mix is really horrible, it will also add in some more aggressive compression - here switched off.
This is what 40 years of mixing experience gets you;))

enter image description here

Then comes your 'smart' limiter. These days they don't just hammer the life out of the peaks, they're much 'smarter'. This also lets you set up your optimum output levels independent of actual limiting/compression.

enter image description here

And, just to check how it's all looking for download vs streaming, you do a final check with this lovely bit of kit - Youlean Loudness Meter [available in free & pro versions] to check your LUFS levels. You can go all out for CD loudness, or like here, kind of split the difference between that & streaming levels. I find if I stay below -10 or so, it still sounds OK for file/CD playback & isn't murdered by the streamers, who all have their own, different ways of messing up your sound.

enter image description here

This track is actually a 'pop' song, so it has less of an overall dynamic range than some tracks, though as it's a bit of a boy-band type ballad, it does have some light & shade, building towards the end. Even so, I didn't want it banging the meters hard right the way through. All these screenshots are from the outro chorus, the loudest bit.

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  • I appreciate your response, but this does not answer my question, my question was specifically what makes a cleaner mix, using a clipper or a limiter to cut the peaks of the audio, but instead your answer is about how to use ozone.
    – paradox
    Jul 30 at 10:47
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    The answer is about how to avoid using old-fashioned hard-limiters & clippers, which I haven't used in 20 years, & use modern smarter equivalents instead. Just because I chose to demonstrate it using a product that can handle the processing chain all within itself doesn't mean there aren't equivalents from a myriad other companies.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 30 at 11:28
  • Your answer is helpful, but again not what I wanted. I want to practice my mastering skills using very old limiters and clippers because I think this will help me understand how things work in more depth, that's why your answer is irrelevant.
    – paradox
    Jul 30 at 14:03
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    Forgive me, but that's like asking to learn to drive a steam train because you want to become a car mechanic. You don't need to understand a simple clipper any more, nor a plain brickwall limiter. They are obsolete tools.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 30 at 14:56
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    Your example is not accurate, a better example would be trying to learn how a PC works in order to use excel. A typical person may never need to know how a PC works to use excel, but some people just want to deeply understand how excel works, not to get better at excel necessarily (which will help trust me), but for the sake of knowledge. And to return as to why your answer is irrelevant, here's another example. Your answer is like I was asking about how I can fix my broken phone, and you responded to take to an expert. Sure this would fix my phone, but my question was how I can fix it myself.
    – paradox
    Jul 30 at 16:42
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Use a soft clipper first to smoothly tame your peaks then use a limiter.

If you wanted to use only old school plugins, it's probably best to use two limiters, one at first to reduce the volume of any peaks that the soft clipper may have missed and another for loudness.

A hard clipper should be used with caution and personally I wouldn't use it.

If you were to choose a hard clipper over a limiter to tame the peaks, a limiter would be better as it wouldn't distort your track.

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To reply directly to the question as asked…

It's better to use a limiter. Clippers are nasty.
Both will wreck your master, if used injudiciously.

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  • Great, thank you.
    – paradox
    Jul 30 at 19:00
  • Did you learn anything? They're both nasty, primitive limiters very, very slightly less-so. Neither are any good at all for a streaming service, where they will re-encode your master after you upload it.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 30 at 19:01

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