The difference between digital and analogue mastering limiter
Written on 8 November 2024 by Andrijan Apostoloski
Tools, tools, tools. We music producers should be so grateful to have so much built and developed for us to use, that I believe since the first times I started crafting sounds to now, I learnt how to shape even the slightest of frequency thanks to lots of hard work by the Logic Pro developers, but also my eagerness to learn dubbing appropriately with full passion ahead.
Not having expensive monitoring never stopped me from aiming towards making music, I just used whatever I had in the past. Since a teenager it was my one of my dreams to own a good hi-fi (afterwards studio monitors) setup, however that took time. From my first Intelligence of Dawn drum and bass album in 2010s to my latest tunes there’s a difference. From the analogue limiter to the digital one there’s a difference. Heck, if we even have the same model of the AKG K240 headphones there will be slight difference between the two… however, let’s not get stuck in audiophile snakes oil and focus on what’s important for today’s comparison.
First, before the limiter got to the chain the premaster went through a preamp, compression – both digital as Molot is my Swiss knife tool for shaping pre masters quickly without losing any quality, and after saturating the result in a tape machine, I use an analogue compressor and at the end of the chain comes the limiter.
