Topic: Hard Limiting, advice please!

[Mobius]

Okie Dokie,
I taped Dr John (that luscious Gris Gris Man!) a few nights ago, and although the PA had great sound and the acoustics were brilliant, it was very quiet, and as such, cos i use in-ear omnis, I get a hell of a lotta dumbfucks yelling, causing major peaks in the recording. The worst of which being my father, who took his job as my beer fetcher a little too seriously, and he can clearly be heard towards the end, poking me and screaming "bad touch bad touch!"....but I digress...

Anywho, in the past I've always just normalized, but from my basic understanding (of which there is little, hence the post) using a hard limit filter might be better? I'm using Cool Edit Pro 2.0, so if any of you have a good explanation of 1) what exactly it is and 2) how to correctly use the CEP hard limiter, I would be muchos obliged.

Oodle too!
Nick

[dklein]

What is the hard limiter? - CEP help has the best explanation.

How to use it? - I've had good experience when the audience is much louder than the music and I want the musical peaks to be the loudest part of the recording (not the screaming yahoos).  

Pick out an applause section only, and apply the hard limit to bring it down below the music levels so you can normalize and have the music be the peak.  If you set the look ahead time to 0ms, you won't get the nasty pumping sound.  You'll have to choose the hard limit level (in dB) based on where your music is at.  Stay away from the music with the hard limit - it does nasty things.

Recommended start settings (use your ears after this)
Limit Max amp to: depends on how low you want it
Boost input by: 0 dB (you don't want gain)
Look Ahead time: 0ms
Release time: 100ms (mostly irrelavent for this use as the signal will only return once at the end of the limit because of the severe limiting being used)