Getting volume at the limiter

But what does it sound like? ;) Mix to an RMS or LU level, leave the limiter there as a safety, but concentrate on the sound and whatever dynamic range you want it to inhabit. It doesn't have to smack its head on a limiter to sound good. If you do want this to happen and you can't lower the limiter threshold, you either need to increase the gain at the output of the previous stage in the chain or insert a gain plugin before the limiter. Remember that it's the makeup gain in a limiter that increases intrinsic loudness, not the limiter itself, although some BWLs auto compensate. >

Hey thanks I don't really 'need' it. I guess it mainly experimenting with final volume. I'm not trying to crank it but often towards the end of mixing at low levels, applying track/ 2bus compression, etc I can still get a bit more volume out of it. The limiter is generally to ensure no overs and I would like to have it up around -0.5db. So I guess if the volume fed into the limiter is too low for the limiter to start working, there's no need for it. I can just make up a few last db's with one of the compressors on the master?

now some limiters, say FabFilter, have their own gain boost as well as the limit side. On the other hand some comp's have a 'make up' parameter to boost volume

That's 24bit integer and 64bit floating point. Sorry... I get picky when the integer vs float is omitted. There's enough confusion around this topic without adding more.

It's still enough Bits to consign the quantisation noise to insignificance. ;) >