Limiter
A limiter is a hard ceiling for loudness: whatever hits it, the signal never gets louder than the level you set. Unlike a Compressor, which gently evens things out, a limiter's job is to catch the occasional spike and clamp it — nothing above the ceiling ever gets through.
Reach for it when:
- a hot effect earlier in the chain (or a peaky source) occasionally spikes and you want a hard safety net, not a gentle squeeze;
- you're feeding this channel into something sensitive to clipping, mid-chain, not just at the very end of your mix.
FX inserts can be added and set up on Free, but they only affect the sound with Premium.
Adding it
On a channel's FX tab, click + Node ▾ → Dynamics → Limiter. It drops into the chain just after the selected node. To edit it, pin one of the dock's two panels to it with ⇅, or set a panel to ⟳ Follow FX tab selection and click the node.
In Simple mode, add it from the Effects block's ⚙ instead — see Simple mode.
Where it sits in the chain matters: put it after whatever you're trying to protect against — a hot effect, a pitch shift, anything that can spike. A limiter placed too early won't catch a spike introduced downstream of it.
This is the FX-insert Limiter — a node you place anywhere in a channel's chain. It's a different control from the output bus's own Limiter, which always sits at the very end of a bus and has its own page.
Reading the panel
The graph is a transfer curve: level coming in runs along the bottom, level going out runs up the side. Below the ceiling the line is a plain diagonal — nothing changes. At the ceiling it turns dead flat: however much louder the input gets, the output stops climbing.
While the engine is running, a bar along the bottom shows the incoming level, and the GR strip on the right edge shows how many dB it's shaving off right now.
This panel is compact enough that it has no ⛶ maximize button; it always shares the dock.
Controls
| Knob | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEILING | −30…0 dB | −1 | The hard maximum. Nothing leaves this node louder than this. |
| ATTACK | 0.1…10 ms | 0.5 | How fast it clamps a peak. Lower catches peaks harder and faster; higher lets a touch more through before it reacts. |
| RELEASE | 10…2000 ms | 50 | How fast it recovers once the peak has passed. |
A brief overshoot can still slip through in the instant before the envelope catches a very sudden transient — a final hard clamp on the output sample guarantees the ceiling is never crossed even then, at the cost of a touch of distortion on that one sample, caught again within a fraction of a millisecond.
A good starting point
- Add the Limiter right after whatever tends to spike, leave CEILING at its default, and play through your loudest moment.
- Watch the GR strip. If it's constantly showing several dB, the limiter is doing real work, not just catching the odd peak — consider turning that earlier stage down instead of leaning on the limiter.
- If peaks still feel abrupt, raise ATTACK slightly for a more natural catch; if something's still slipping through audibly, lower it.
A ceiling a fraction of a dB below 0 (around −1 dB) is a safe default — you're not trying to squash the mix here, just guarantee nothing above the ceiling gets through.
Presets, bypass and reset
- PRESET ▾ in the panel header applies a saved setup, or saves the current one under a name. Once one is applied the header shows Preset: name — see Knowing what preset is applied. Ready-made limiter setups can be found in the Workshop — Workshop ▸ Browse, filter chip FX Limiter.
- ON / OFF bypasses just this node — the quickest way to hear whether it's helping.
- RESET returns every knob to its default.
Related
- Compressor — evens out the general dynamic range; use it for shaping level, the Limiter for catching the outliers a compressor lets through.
- Expander — the opposite job, on the quiet end: pushes quiet parts down instead of clamping loud ones.
- Output bus Limiter — the always-on safety net at the very end of a bus, a separate control from this node.
- Effects Rack — adding, ordering and rewiring nodes.