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I've hooked up the Limiter S to the Mon Out to get rid of abnormal highs (have some problems with Cubase making terrible noise sometimes when starting to playback a wav).

Can you recommned me a setting for not affecting the "normal" monitoring sound, let this just pass through and then get rid of the not that common abnormal highs? Even better if someone has a preset.

I'm not sure if this is absolutely accurate, but maybe the softclip effect might work better because the Limiter lets some sound through at times. The softclip is in "others" folder.

Checked under Effects/Stereo/Others but can't find the Softclip? Running Pulsar 3.01.

Softclip comes with propack...

Aha, OK. So I guess I'm stuck with Limiter then for now. Any suggestions for a preset?

It's hard on a limiter becaues in order to not miss any peaks, you'll need to set a big lookahead (for pulsar's limiter anyway), and however many milisecs you have for lookahead, is how much you're total output will lag. If that doesn't matter, then you can try:
threshold -0.1db (the closer you can get to 0db, the more accurate the output will be)
max ratio
0 millisec attack
release of around 100-200 milisecs (lower the better)
0db gain

and then any amount of lookahead that works for you.

I'm still inclined to think that the pulsar limiter is not that reliable. The first few samples, or few miliseconds always comes through as a "snap", unless you're lookahead is at a very big value. You can still use it as a way to protect your ears/monitors, but don't depend on it to be 100% fail proof.

I could be wrong though.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2002-07-07 12:04 ]</font>

bad idea.something's not set up right if you're having serious problems that need to be solved with a limiter.how can you truly monitor or adjust dynamics in your work if there's an extra device in the monitoring chain that's not part of the actual work?

Kensuguro: Thanks for the tip! I will try it out. What does Softclip do, same thing but better?

Garyb: Yep, I sometimes get a really high noise for half a second or so when starting playback in Cubase. I don't know what it comes from. I should go to the bottom with that but I don't have the time to reinstall and such right now. You're right about the dynamics, I'm not using it when doing the final mix though...

I'm not too clear about the inner workings of the softclip, it seems to be some sort of saturation/overdrive thing.. Of course, the clipping will cause distortion in the signal, but it's done so that it's barely noticable. Much better than bad dynamic processing. The device has 2 parameters, drive percentage, and the output ceiling db. The drive can be set a 0, and the ceiling at -0.1 db, and that should be as clear as possible, without really clipping anything.

I'd agree with garyb in that this setup shouldn't be anything to get accustomed to.. but it should be quick fix to your (strange?) situation. heh, there are times when a little accuracy has to be traded for speed. Good luck with whatever you're doing tho, and hope you figure out the problem.

You can set it at -1db too. That leaves a bit more headroom for the effect to kick in - I guess?

Immanuel

Hey Gary,
i just had the same thought.

Question to Need: do you really just want to insert a limiter in your monitor way ?

Naah... I know I shouldn't But right now I get terrible noises now and then (see above) and this was a quick & dirty fix.

Is it a feedback sound? Ie, is it a high-frequency whine sound? If so, you might check your routing. You might be creating a loop (I was also having this problem with Pulsar/Cubase). It would be better to get to the root of the problem.

Yes, exactly what I get. Though it lasts just half a second or so when I starting playback in Cubase.

I don't know where the feedback could be... It's from Cubase the noise comes from though. See the Master meters go up to 53. Monitoring is disabled.

I've posted four sceenshots of my Pulsar setup:

http://www.2xm.com/downloads/Routing.jpg

http://www.2xm.com/downloads/BigmixerInputs.jpg

http://www.2xm.com/downloads/BigmixerOutputs.jpg

http://www.2xm.com/downloads/Buses.jpg

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Need on 2002-07-10 18:01 ]</font>

Here's a quick thing to try:

Within Cubase, bring up the master mixer and mute the outputs. (The master mixer uses a bus to send data back to Pulsar. Each of your Cubase tracks also send data back to Pulsar on a bus. If your master mixer is using the same bus as one of your individual tracks, I believe that creates a loop, as the individual tracks are also being sent to the master mixer.) See if this fixes your problem. The feedback issue is definitely a routing problem, and you just have to find out where the infinite loop is.

Good luck!