FabFilter Pro-L 2

Loud and clear
A true peak limiter is an essential tool for every mastering or mixing engineer. Are you looking for a professional, feature-packed limiter that is loud and transparent at the same time, equipped with extensive loudness metering? Then FabFilter Pro-L 2 is your weapon of choice!

At some point in your mixing or mastering session, a good limiter becomes a crucial tool for bringing out the loudness of a signal while preventing clipping and peaks. But oftentimes, a number of us can be somewhat confused as to what the limiter is really doing to our tracks. We may actually be doing more harm than good! The potential for clipping is likely, and considering that a limiter can sometimes introduce inter-sample peaks that aren’t in the original signal, it’s not always that obvious to us when these negative side-effects happen.

What stood out to us upon the FabFilter Pro-L’s original release for its visual level displays and extensive controls and meters. Like a number of FabFilter plug-ins, its interface utilized impressive visuals to show the input, output and gain reduction levels, giving you a true picture of how the limiter is affecting your audio signal. Now, the Pro-L 2 has refined this limiter with new features that enhance the already-impressive original.

All of the great features of the original plug-in are back in this version. The visual input display and controls are all here, with a few additions. And the new features of the Pro-L 2 radically expand the capabilities of the plug-in’s first incarnation. These include Surround Sound limiting, several new types of metering, true peak limiting, up to 32x oversampling, new listening options, and more. Use some of the impressive presets to “set it and forget it”, or get more particular with its advanced controls, all while seeing exactly what’s happening in the visual input display. Don’t let an inferior limiter do unnecessary damage to your session! Use the Pro-L 2 and know exactly what you’re getting.

Brand New Features in Pro-L 2

• Four New Limiting Algorithms (in addition to the original four)
• Surround Sound Support (up to 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos)
• New Metering and display modes with customizable scale and target levels
• Up to 32x Oversampling (compared to the original’s 4x)
• DC offset filtering (optional)
• Sidechain triggering (optional)
• Unity Gain option
• Audition Limiting option (listen to gain change only)
• Analyze audio (in Audiosuite) without rendering
• New Presets

Main Features retained from the original FabFilter Pro-L:

• Real-Time Level Display
• Adjustable lookahead, attack, release, and gain settings
• Separate channel link settings for transients and release
• Dithering with three different noise shape settings
• K-System metering with real-time limiting display
• Inter-Sample Peak (ISP) Detection
• MIDI Learn allows for adjusting parameters with a MIDI controller
• Available in VST, VST3, AU (Audio Units), AAX Native and AudioSuite formats (64-bit and 32-bit), plus RTAS (32-bit only) for Mac OS X and Windows

Main Controls

• Eight main limiting styles (Transparent, Punchy, Dynamic, Allround, Aggressive, Modern, Bus, Safe) that can be further adjusted. Allows for a variety of sounds to make the limiting more transparent, or to color and distort for effect.
• Gain slider control adjusts gain
• Lookahead – examine gain reduction needed ahead of time, to reduce possible distortion
• Attack and release controls adjust the release stage of limiting
• Save presets for future use, with the option to set new preset as plug-in default
• Channel Linking – Process each channel of a stereo signal differently with separate transient and release knobs

Level Display & Metering

• Real-Time Level Display visualizes your audio waveforms, with separate visuals/colors for input level, output level, gain reduction levels, and loudness level
  • Display mode options change behavior of visual input display speed
• Right-side level meter shows output and gain reduction
• Adjustable meter scale (includes Loudness, K-12, K-14, and K-20 scales
• Rezise interface and switch to Compact mode

Dithering

• Choose from 24, 22, 20, 18, and 16-bit dithering (or turn it off)
• Three noise Shaping settings (Basic, Optimized, Weighted) use different algorithms to add dithering noise to audio

ISP Detection, Oversampling and True Peak Limiting

• ISP Metering reveals presence of Inter-Sample Peaks
• Up to 32X oversampling to reduce aliasing and Inter-sample peaks (compared to the original Pro-L’s 4x)
• True Peak Limiting adjusts peaks that exist in the signal as well as peaks introduced by the limiter

Metering

• Different Metering scales allow you to highlight specific dynamic ranges for precision, or to get a total reading of the entire dynamic range
• Normal metering scale options include a 16db, 32db, and 48db range
• Optional K-Metering scales offer different dynamic ranges optimized for different types of projects

Input, Output, and Listening Options

• Filter DC offset removes DC bias from signal, preventing unnecessary limiting
• Side Chain Triggering allows for seperate audio signals to feed detection of limiter – helpful for stem mastering
• Unity Gain automatically changes output in order to compare to original signal, giving you a true comparison unhindered by the “louder is better” phenomenon
• Bypass the plug-in entirely with global bypass control

Surround Limiting

• Supports all important formats, up to 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos
• Automatically adapts for multi-channel format
• Expanded channel linking controls for Surround channels

MIDI Learn

• Use your MIDI controller to control different parametrs of the plug-in

Requirements

Windows

• 64-bit: Windows 10, 8, 7 or Vista
• 32-bit: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista or XP
• VST 2/3 host or Pro Tools

Mac OS X

• OS X 10.6 or higher
• AU or VST 2/3 host or Pro Tools
• Intel processor