Softube's Limit Pro can release the kick slower than the snare

A limiter that releases quickly on a bass-heavy mix runs into a timing problem. One cycle of a 40 Hz note lasts 25 milliseconds. If the gain is still moving within that cycle, the limiter is reshaping the waveform rather than turning it down, and that is heard as distortion in the low end.

The usual remedies are a slower release, which costs loudness everywhere, or a long lookahead, which costs latency. Softube’s Limit Pro, released on 7 October, offers two other routes.

Release that depends on frequency

Adaptive Release already releases faster after transients than after sustained material. It can also be made frequency dependent, so different parts of the spectrum get different release times inside one broadband limiter. Softube’s own example is a low kick getting a longer release than a high snare.

Separately, Low Frequency Protection takes over the limiting of sub-bass to avoid that distortion, and Softube positions it as an alternative to the long lookahead other limiters rely on for low end.

There are three peak suppression methods. Standard is predictive. Adaptive is as fast as possible but slows down when fast action would distort the lows. Fast is, in Softube’s words, almost like clipping without clipping, which is the territory our guide on clipping and limiting covers.

Metering that shows the cost

Alongside true peak, peak and LUFS, Limit Pro has a Loudness Loss meter and distortion metering. The unusual one is the Distogram, which shows what kind of distortion the limiting adds and where: whether the new harmonics land far above the incoming audio or close to it. Distortion close to the source frequency tends to hide inside it, while distortion far above it is easier to hear.

A second plug-in, Limit Go, comes with it: the same limiting with three styles (Raw, Clean and Safe), low latency and true-peak processing.

Price and formats

$99 or €99 on sale, normally 149, with no end date stated. Limit Go alone is 89, normally 99. Both are also in Softube’s Flow Mastering and Complete Suite subscriptions. AU, VST, VST3 and AAX on macOS 14, 15 and 26, and Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). A Softube account and an iLok account are needed, but not a physical iLok.