I'm not sure on the connections, as the mastering studio that I used this in had it all hooked up and good to go. It's a digital processor that can handle up to 96 K sample rates and has a pretty high quality 24 bit analog to digital and digital to analog converter. The L2 hardware version came before the L2 software plug-in, but is modeled after the L1 plug-in. The Waves L2 UltraMaximizer is a hardware version of the ever popular L2 limiting plug-in. But that’s good news for the rest of us if you’re not setting up a hardware-based mastering studio, the much cheaper plugin will probably do the job just as well. The one major downside? It sounds virtually identical to the plugin on which it’s based. If you’ve ever compared your own mix with a chart hit and wondered how they’ve managed to push the mix that loud then you can all but guarantee that a maximiser like the L2 has played a pivotal role somewhere in the mastering chain.
But that doesn’t stop it being one of the most popular pieces of outboard among mastering engineers looking to squeeze that last fraction of a decibel out of a mix. When pushed hard it’ll happily destroy the dynamics of your track, introduce distortion and eventually create the most horrifically clipped, harsh sound you can imagine. Under the covers the L2 works like any other limiter, by effectively reducing the peak signals in a mix so that everything can be amplified in order to increase the average loudness.īut how does it actually sound? Let’s just say you’re not buying the L2 for its character. As such, it’s become a go-to weapon in many mastering engineers’ arsenals. In the era of aggressive loudness, the appeal of the L2 is obvious: it makes tracks louder. Only very recently have plugins caught up with analogue technology when it comes to controlling the dynamics of a signal. Compression is one of those areas where DSP-based units have traditionally been noticeably inferior to their analogue counterparts.
This ‘ultramaximizer’ (essentially a look-ahead stereo mastering limiter) is the only digital unit to make the cut.
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