In the past while mastering music, I’ve used Logic’s native Adaptive Limiter plugin. I created a Gain stage before it, drove in some gain, and then used the Loudness plugin to check for LUFS, and then tweaked the gain accordingly until I hit my target of -12dB LUFS.
Today I bought Wave’s L3 plugin and I’m not sure how to handle this. I’ve been told in a tutorial I’m supposed to lower the threshold until the Attenuation starts hitting around 3. Easy to do, but makes the song super loud, more like -8dB LUFS.
So how do I then export at a lower volume like -12dB LUFS?
L3 cannot meter LUFS, for that we have the WLM Plus loudness meter.
You can defines the LUFS standards and behavior and even apply a true peak limiter!
Watch the videos on the page for more information.
It sounds to me, maybe, that much attenuation might be too much for your purpose.
Maybe you can approach this this like you did with Adaptive Limiter, so your workflow doesn’t have to change. Instead of one threshold slider you have several, just lower them all at the same time, as if they were one. Then tweak the gain as you do, but following that you have the ability to finesse L3’s individual bands a bit more and the other parameters.
Just keep it simple at first and use the A/B facilities to keep a backup of your setting before you mess around with it too much and screw yourself around. It’s easy to do.
L316 is a truly incredible limiter, and there’s a trick to using it that many people don’t know!
Instead of digging in really deep and using L316 to achieve your target loudness — instead, drag the double-arrow knob (between the level & output meters) down until it’s only engaging on the peakiest peaks of the various bands.
If you dig in too deep with a multiband limiter it can have a flattening effect to your tonal balance — so it often works better in series with a traditional limiter right after it.
So use L316 to shave off just the peakiest peaks, and then follow up with a secondary limiter like L1 or L2 to achieve your target loudness.
As mentioned, WLM Plus is a limiter with built in metering so you could just use that after L316 if you want the metering (or put the regular WLM after L1/L2 to meter if you’re using those.)
But the main takeaway here is using L316 prior to a traditional limiter to allow the traditional limiter to work more transparently by shaving off peaks on a per-band basis so that the final limiter isn’t overreacting to those peaks.