Educate me on "brick wall" limiters...

[rasputin1963]

Is it true that all "brick wall" limiters are not the same, not made equal?

 

It seems to me that the ultimate goal of a brick wall limiter is to take that "blat" of sound from your music ensemble, whether intentional or accidental, whether it be horns, guitar, vocals, whatever, and keep that loudest tone as pretty and musical-sounding as possible, right?

 

Am I right in thinking that a brick wall limiter should give the listener the auditory illusion of great amplitude... without actually recording that amplitude onto tape or hard-drive medium?

 

How recent is the advent of the brick wall limiter? I was listening the other day to Jimi Hendrix's greatest hits (1967) and also to the original Broadway cast recording of HAIR (1968). On both of these recordings there are plenty of nasty-sounding gain peaks from guitars and vocals. The HAIR album is especially bad... you ageing hippies, pull out your album and give it a re-listen; the stage vocalists continually "peg" the microphones in a nasty way throughout the whole show... yet I suppose the listener of 1968 was so caught up in the fun of the music that he could overlook these engineering gaffes... (?) I'm guessing that there is little modern digital re-masterers can do to totally eliminate the nasty distortions of yore?

 

Yet a more expensive-- or more "serious"?-- production outfit of 1968-- say Herb Alpert or Henry Mancini-- never ever would've allowed a recording of theirs to be issued which had these nasty distorted peaks... Wassup widdat?

 

What are some obvious-- and not so obvious-- uses of the brickwall limiter?

 

What's the most "transparent/invisible" brickwall on the market today?

[Paully]

Here's a link to a product that claims to be a brick wall compressor/limiter. Pretty self-explainitory.

 

www.nomadfactory.com/products/blue_dynamics/index.html

 

As far as those old recordings go, you can bet they were compressed and/or limited, but not overly so. You may be hearing a little known phenomenon known as dynamics, not available when program material is over-compressed . The screeches, etc. in Hair were well within the parameters needed to transfer to vinyl, just louder than everything else. Remember, these were Broadway singers with loud voices. Some mics may have been simply overloading and causing momentary distortion. Who knows.

 

Best, Paul

[bp]

 

Originally posted by Paully You may be hearing a little known phenomenon known as dynamics . Best, Paul

 

 

Let the truth be known.................