Limiter has no effect

[lucking]

First of all, i am a rookie at audio recording/editing, and this is kinda the first time i’m doing it. Using windows 8.1. and audacity 2.1.1.
I have a guitar pickup brand, and i want to record demos of the pickups to put on our website.
Recording gear:
Guitar–>Amp–>Shure Sm-57–>Lexicon Alpha studio sound card–>Audacity.

First thing i’m wondering, when i record (listening while recording through an old pair of Beats Studio from back when i was “the basketball guy” haha), the guitar is very bassy and almost muddy. But, when i then play the recorded part in Audacity, it is very bright and almost acoustic-ish… Is this just because i havn’t rendered or finished the file?

The main question is tho, i’ve tried to do what this guy does (i know its a way older video and version of audacity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=likk4fbEblg
The recording i’ve done ranges in the -24 to -3 dB range. When i try to apply the (hard) limiter to about -7db, nothing happens at all! No peaks are cut off, and it has no visual change at all… I’ve tried multiple limits all the way from -0.5 to -10… But no effect at all.

I’ve also tried to amplify the track to fit with max dB limit of -0,1 (to avoid clipping) as he does to get it to “finished” volume, but it still has a lot of clipping in the peaks…

Any clever people out here to help me out with what i’m doing wrong/what i should do? Thx in advance!

[kozikowski]

nothing happens at all!

Did you select the song by clicking just above MUTE on the left? Some effects auto-select and some don’t.

recording through an old pair of Beats Studio

Are they plugged in to the Lexicon? You could be listening to both the Lexicon local monitoring and Audacity. Turn off Audacity Playthrough.

Audacity > Edit > Preferences > Recording: [_] Playthrough (de-select).

Koz

[Trebor]

@lucking

… The recording i’ve done ranges in the -24 to -3 dB range. When i try to apply the (hard) limiter to about -7db, nothing happens at all! No peaks are cut off, and it has no visual change at all… I’ve tried multiple limits all the way from -0.5 to -10… But no effect at all.

In that case the peaks have to exceed -7db to be attenuated.
Applying a limiter with a -7db threshold to a recording where everything is below (say) -10dB will make no difference to it , it only effects the parts of the waveform -7dB and above.

BTW If you are using the limiter to maximize-volume. you have to set “apply make-up gain” to “Yes” …

[DVDdoug]

(listening while recording through an old pair of Beats Studio from back when i was “the basketball guy” haha), the guitar is very bassy and almost muddy. But, when i then play the recorded part in Audacity, it is very bright and almost acoustic-ish…

Strange… Are you also using the Beats when you listen in Audacity?

Is this just because i havn’t rendered or finished the file?

No. Rendering (Exporting) should have no effect, except the rendered file can be clipped (if you go over 0dB in Audacity), or you could render to low-bitrate MP3, etc.

i’ve tried to do what this guy does (i know its a way older video and version of audacity):

The new limiter is TOTALLY different, and MUCH improved! As far as I can tell, the Hard Limit setting doesn’t change the wave shape at all. But, it does work for me…

Here’s what I just tried, and it worked -

1. Run the Amplify effect and accept the default to normalize the peaks at 0db.
2. Run the Limiter with the Hard Limit option at -3dB (with no gain adjustment).
3. Run the Amplify effect again just to check the peaks. Amplify defaults to +3dB, indicating that the peaks are now limited to -3dB.

No peaks are cut off, and it has no visual change at all…

If you want the peaks clipped, try the Hard Clip option.

No peaks are cut off, and it has no visual change at all…

…but it still has a lot of clipping in the peaks.

That seem contradictory…

There are several places you can get clipping. The ONLY place lowering the level in Audacity helps is if the clipping happens during rendering/exporting. (i.e. “Regular” WAV files are hard limited to 0dB.) You can go over 0dB if you render to 32-bit floating-point WAV, but you are still in danger of clipping your digital-to-analog converter when you play back. Lowering the volume in Audacity doesn’t change the wave shape so it doesn’t cure any existing clipping.

Audacity uses floating-point internally, so Audacity itself won’t clip. For example, you can boost the level until the peaks hit +12dB (or a lot more) and although Audacity will indicate red for potential clipping, the peaks won’t be clipped. Since the peaks are not clipped, you can lower level before exporting and there will be no (added) clipping.

1. Your guitar amp can clip. Guitar amplifiers are usually designed to “soft clip” when over-driven for “pleasing distortion”, and by the time the clipped signal goes through the speaker and into a microphone, the wave shape will change so it won’t look anything like hard clipping.

2. The electronics in a condenser mic can clip. The SM57 is a dynamic mic (no internal electronics) and it’s virtually impossible to clip. If a sound is loud enough to clip an SM57/58 you’ve probably got instant-permanent hearing damage.

3. The preamp in your interface can clip. That’s rare, but it can happen with the gain turned-up or with a “hot” guitar pickup (or active pickup) into an instrument input. In an interface, the preamp usually has plenty of headroom so the ADC clips long before the preamp.

4. Your ADC (analog-to-digital converter) can clip during recording. That’s the most common source of clipping in digital recordings. I like to run the Amplify effect immediately after recording to check the “headroom”. If Amplify defaults to 0dB, I’ve got no headroom and I assume the recording is clipped. (You can optionally cancel the effect after checking the peak level.)

5. You can get clipping when you export/render. Many things you do during editing (mixing, EQ, or boosting the volume, etc.) can boost the level over 0dB, and then you can get clipping when you render to an integer format. That’s a very common problem. Of course, you can bring the level down by normalizing or with the Amplify effect before exporting, or you can simply check the peak level with the Amplify effect.

6. Your DAC (digital-to-analog converter) can clip during playback. That ONLY happens if your Audacity waveform goes over 0dB, or if you are playing a floating-point file that goes over 0dB. Or, there are certain players (such as VLC) that can boost the volume over “100%”, and these can clip your DAC.

7. Your power amplifier (or active monitors/speakers) can clip if you crank the analog volume up too high.