Sonnox Elite Native review – Limiter
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in Music Technology
As part of the Sonnox Elite Native bundle, and the subject of my final review in this series of four, today I’m looking at the Sonnox ‘Limiter’. This plug-in is certainly a comprehensive and professional tool which visually is divided into three sound-shaping GUI sections. These, used in combination, form the basis of creating both subtle and extreme limiting solutions, proving it to be far from just your ‘average’ limiter plug-in.
Section one is the ‘input’ area, allowing the user to push the digital signal to the required level and beyond (more on that later). The central ‘pre-process’ section utilises a look-ahead signal acquisition feature, the main function of which is to preserve signal detail in the stereo field which can sometimes be lost when engaging the limiting process in other plug-ins. The three prominent faders are the familiar attack, release and variable soft knee adjustments plus the always useful gain reduction meter.
The ‘auto-gain’ button, when on, keeps a check on the input signal’s dynamic range, smoothing out any level changes that may unduly effect the optimal performance of the plug-in. Underneath this is the ‘safe-mode’ button, which flicks in a tremendously useful safety net option ensuring that no matter how hard the user pushes the input gain (even up to an unbelievable +16dB!), the output signal will not, I repeat not clip. Sure it’ll be squashed to ruddy hell, but it aint gonna clip. During my time at the test bench with the Sonnox Elite Native Limiter, I almost always left both of these failsafes switched on.
Over on the final third ‘output’ section, the ‘enhance’ fader presents some useful functionality which I reckon may well take its raison d’etre from its close sibling, the Sonnox Inflator plug-in. This adjustment feeds in flavours of perceived loudness with additional harmonic warmth and presence too. Even when the plug-in was engaged in rather heavy-duty limiting actions during my test, ‘enhance’ maintained the sonic detail at the output stage, seemingly no matter how hard I pushed the signal. The main output fader of course allows trimming of the final signal to whatever your personal or client requirements may dictate or stipulate. Over in the GUI’s top-right meanwhile are two more useful buttons: ‘recon’ meter and ‘auto-comp’. Used together, these monitor and avoid the generation of reconstruction overloads (usually present when extreme limiting and compression is happening) by dynamically correcting them in real-time (should they occur).
Although a bespoke, source specific manual set-up of the Sonnox Limiter is always possible, a quicker way of getting instant gratification or just a darn fine starting point for fine-tuning is to access the plug-in presets. These are plentiful (numbering almost 40) and accommodate just about every production scenario I could find myself working in. The presets meet the needs of acoustic musicians (jazz, rock etc), dance/electronica/pop R&B producers and mastering engineers, ranging from the discrete to extreme and ‘everyday’ to creative output signals. Don’t assume that the Limiter is just… limited to sitting over your main stereo output bus, no sir’ee. Try out, for example, the two bass distortion presets over a set of acoustic and synth basses to see what it can bring to the sound-palette table, and maybe over your percussion or drum bus with a splash of medium limiting. Really, the sky’s the (oh no, not again) limit.
So, my praise has continued into this, my fourth day of testing the Sonnox Elite Native bundle. The Limiter has proved itself to be yet another great plug-in that does its job, with bells, whistles and a fanfare to boot. Yes, the complete Elite bundle isn’t cheap, but the return on investment if you do decide to purchase will be very high in terms of what this bundle creatively brings to your production world – inspiration, usefulness and long-term reliability. I suggest you download the free trial version of the whole Sonnox bundle, and take some quality time to fully investigate what these plug-ins can do. Simply then, from me, the Sonnox Elite Native bundle is highly recommended.
Tags: elite native, limiter, sonnox