Using Limiters for quality assurance and compliance

We’ve seen what LUFS are and how they are used, and gone over how to adjust the volume for a project accordingly to meet loudness standards. While it’s good to be able to focus on trouble spots, you have tools at your disposal to make mixing for specific targets easier. Mainly, Limiters are your best friend in this area. Limiters can work as a “brick wall” that prevents anything from going over a specific peak level. They can also be used as a “maximizer,” making things louder to meet a target, depending on how they are used.

I personally always like to mix somewhere around -24 dB LUFS to give me lots of headroom, regardless of the medium I’m mixing in. Many delivery formats are close to that, and I may adjust accordingly at the mix stage to ensure I hit those targets, but many, many online streaming platforms target much louder than that. Instead of losing that headroom while I...