How To Use The Limiter Plugin In Logic Pro | Mastering Songs

Mastering is the final stage a song goes through before getting distributed and released on streaming platforms. According to taste and style, music producers and mastering engineers approach different methods and strategies to master a song. Nevertheless, limiter plugins are omnipresent at the end of the mastering chain, regardless of the genre of music you’re working on.

Over the years, Apple’s Logic Pro has gained significant popularity as one of the most versatile digital audio workstations (DAWs) in the world, thanks to its long list of stock sounds, tools, and features. One of the simple yet powerful plugins in Logic’s arsenal is the Limiter plugin.

The limiter allows us to achieve that commercial loudness we hear in popular songs. Moreover, it also helps get rid of the audio signals peaking and resulting in clipping sounds or distortion. Knowing how to use a limiter is critical towards finalizing your project and making it sound good with any speaker. Without further ado, let’s go through everything you need to know to start using the Limiter plugin in Logic Pro.

What Is A Limiter?

When working on a song, we always want to keep an eye out on our Stereo Out level meter to ensure no signal passes the 0.0 dBs barrier. Even if it sounds fine in Logic, you’ll hear jarring and unwanted distortion in the louder parts of your project once you bounce (export) it.

As a general rule, the more room you leave in your Stereo Out, the better. If your gain levels are low, you can always increase them digitally. But if your audio signals peak and start clipping, you can’t really do much to get rid of the distortions entirely. Following this rule, you’ll realize that your exported songs may sound generally quieter than what you hear on Spotify’s top charts; that’s when a limiter plugin comes to our aid.

The primary objective of a limiter is what it’s called: to limit signals from passing a certain threshold. Another task that limiters do is to increase the perceived loudness of the audio signal by increasing the quieter parts of it.

How To Use Logic’s Limiter

You can use limiters on individual tracks. Still, the common use of the limiter is towards the end of the plugins chain on the Stereo out bus.

To add Logic’s Limiter plugin:

•  Press “X” on your keyboard to open the mixer and locate the “Stereo Out” channel strip.
•  Click on the effects slot and hover your pointer on “Dynamics.”
•  Select “Limiter” and open it in Stereo.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the plugin’s interface is pretty straightforward. You have four knobs to control different parameters and a graph to the left to monitor signal input, reduction, and output. Let’s see what each of these knobs do.

Gain: This knob sets the amount of gain applied to your signal. If, for instance, the loudest part of your Stereo Out output has - 5.0 dBs of room, you’d want to apply a similar amount of gain in the limiter, maybe a tiny bit less.

Release: It allows you to set the time and determine how long it takes for the limiter to turn off and stop processing once the signal falls below the threshold. As a rule of thumb, I suggest starting with 100.0 ms and adjusting from there while listening to your track. Too much release time can result in a flat, doll-sounding track that lacks dynamics. On the other hand, going below 20.0 ms can result in distortion.

Output Level: this is the threshold you don’t want your signal to pass. You might think it’s sensible to leave it at 0.0 dBs since it’s past that level that we start facing problems. However, inter-sample peaks often exceed this threshold and add distorted artifacts in playback devices. Because of this, you’d always want to turn it down to 0.2 or 0.3 dBs.

Lookahead: this knob adjusts how far ahead the plugin analyzes the audio signal. This might result in some latencies, which should be fine since you’re in the mastering stage and aren’t recording anything. Any value above 1.0 ms works.

Moreover, Logic’s Limiter gives you two modes you can work with: Legacy and Precision.

The precision mode allows for hard limiting and gives you True Peak Detection. However, it can introduce distortion artifacts.

In Legacy mode, you can use a soft knee for a gentler effect. It will sound less abrupt and will reduce distortion artifacts, but it lacks the punchiness of the previous mode.

One of the ways I recommend monitoring your limiter is to add a Loudness Meter plugin after your limiter and check how loud your track gets.

•  Click on the effects slot under your Limiter plugin and hover your pointer on “Metering.”
•  Select “Loudness Meter” and open it in Stereo.

You’d want your signal level to be between -9.0 and -3.0 dBs to reach industry-standard loudness.

Final Thoughts On Using Logic Pro’s Limiter For Mastering

The limiter is one of the most essential plugins for producers and audio engineers that lets you lift everything up and reach the commercial loudness you find in mainstream records.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when using a limiter. However, there are some general rules you’d want to consider to avoid dealing with distorted artifacts and annoying clipping noises in your exported audio file.

For more lessons on mixing, mastering, and producing, check out my Free 6 Pillars To Learn Logic Pro Faster guidebook.