Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles is famous for its drum sound that uses agressively the limiter, with a sidechain triggered by the bass drum. the recording workflow was different back then (1966) though, they did It Right At The Source ;-)

This channel is so helpful

Yes - Gandalf ------- well done video

This is such amazing advice. I learned a great amount from this and your answers were exactly what I was looking for/needed.

I got a counter thought for you. I recently experiment it and then search for different mastering engineer opinion. As always, it depends on so many factors but a lot of them including Gavin Lurssen & Reuben Cohen, Jonathan Wyner and Pete Lyman said if you mix into a limiter, please do not remove it before sending to mastering. And it is pretty logic what they said. If you remove it, your mix will be different because as you said, limiter affects more than just dynamic. It affects tones and balance. So if you mix with a limiter and it is good. Then send your mix to master like that and that's it. Personally, I mix with a limiter more as a safety setting and just control my gains staging to be good at any moment. So my limiter is not that useful or even not even triggering anything at all.

Some excellent points there Joe. I too thought for years that limiting was only for the mastering stage, but I have more recently seen advice suggesting that you can also mix into a Limiter to achieve a different type of mix character. There is a caveat though, that making volume changes to louder parts in the mix may not appear to do much if those parts are already hitting the Limiter, so you have to be very aware of what the Limiter is doing while you mix.

I generally export a mix without a Limiter, then as I have Ozone 9, I bring in the exported mix and run it through Ozone using their presets so I can get a good test mix with decent loudness and limiting. When I decide that the mix is finished, then I'll do a more hands on approach to it in Ozone and use a mixture of master assistant and also my owm tweaks.

Depending on the particular song,, sound, genre and mixing engineer, mixing into a Limiter is not always the no go that it used to be, though personally I don't think I'm experienced enough yet to start mixing into a limiter.

Anyway, thanks again for the great video - I always learn something useful from  watching them 👍

This is fantastic advice and answered my own fuzzy questions about this.
Thank you very much !

God bless you Joe! You are so helpful!

Totally agree...If anyone wants to add compression to a track, they would never, ever just presume what it might sound like.  They would place the compression themselves and tweak.  Even if I think someone else is going to master, I need to know how limiting is going to affect the snare (I'm a drummer). I've also mastered my own mixes, and in those cases, I did not remove the limiter, before exporting to "master" later.  However, in the interest of objectivity, I would often export one copy without it and master separately on a different day.  Some of my best, loudest mixes, had the limiter on the mix, and then applied a second time in mastering, but rarely if ever was either limiter doing more than about 0.5-2dB in gain reduction.

Mixing into the limiter tells me where the whole mix will hit gain reduction and how much, and what might be causing it.  Of course, it usually the snare. It also tells me if my mix favors a certain frequency range hitting the compression and limiting.  This way, I can add a HPF side chain to the compression if need be, to engage it even less, for example, if its a heavy low-end containing track.   Furthermore, in Logic, you can just add a gain plug-in to the master bus and then drop the whole mix -5, 10dB, whatever you need, to never engage the gain reduction.  Of course, the mix still sounds different.  This is where we can accurately decide if the limiter makes the mix sound "better."

Gain match them and A/B with and without it.  if its better, leave it on and cont mixing.  If its worse, take it off and master separately or send off to your favorite mastering engineer, whom probably has better monitoring, room and skills.  Enjoy!

I have been doing what you have been doing for pretty much exactly for those reasons.

I use sonible's pure:limit in the post-fader position in the Stereo Out (master fader) because it is a very simple tool.  But when I am finally done and do my mastering or master preparation, the limiter is turned off.

For me, it's fine to use limiter (if set it correctly). You may try use different styles of limiting in Pro-L plugin.

and one of the most important things is when you mix into the limiter and maybe some compression and stuff , you may hear the need of going back to your mix and push back some faders or touch up some of your eq and compression moves , because the character of your mix will change in loud form.

I apply the stock limiter on the Digital Return (Mains) because curiously many VST instruments cause clipping when loaded.😃

If mixing into a limiter is wrong, I don't want to be right. First thing I do when I start the mix after editing, basic panning and static levels is turn on my 2-bus and limiter.

Great tutorial by Master Joe Gilder. I like the visualization within plugins, to confirm what I hear, and to help associate the “if I’m hearing this X, that Y is what I’m going to see. For me,in mixing and mastering, the ears run the show.

I completely agree with teaching means concepts such as how and why.

Very insightful, Joe!!!

W video man. thanks for this

Many instructors I hear say they do mix into a limiter and even question how you can get a good mix without it. But some do not use a limiter except to check the sound. Some say if you keep limiter on through the process it masks the tracks what is going on. I’m not comfortable mixing with the limiter.

Tip: … and use a limiter on the master buss during live streams too, whether its your church or your youtube podcast👍

I only use limiters when mixing on individual elements poking through. Never on the mixbus. It seems pointless, and I've learned how to get a good crest factor while mixing, so I can know reliably that my mix will handle soft clipping and limiting during mastering well. :D