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4L2 - new clothes for a free limiter

The plugin with a too long name, the low latency look-ahead limiter is a limiter that takes slightly non-traditional approach in the whole affair.

Rather than rely on long look-ahead times, 4L tries to minimize distortion by combining smooth release with a somewhat clever attack curve to keep the signal relatively clean even when forced to gain-ride.

Transparent? Not really, but that never was a design goal. And when I say "relatively clean" that's what it means; at least it never clips. But hey, the latency is only half a millisecond, which makes it fairly well suited for live use or other situations where you want to avoid too much latency buildup.

It was originally designed for sound design purposes, but can usually deal with your two-bus too in case you lack anything better, or want to keep things simple. Because simple it is.

Note: this is not a drop-in
replacement for original 4L!
Original 4L has been discontinued.

Download 4L2

Compared to the original 4L:

• it has a custom GUI by me and my wonderful graphics skills
• meters for output (peak and fast-moving RMS) and gain reduction
• slightly different release curve; similar but starts a bit faster
• to accomodate different use-cases we have (revised in 1.9.2):
  1. threshold control is just that; no peaks will pass the level set
  2. makeup, in percentage of the threshold (100% is full auto-makeup)
  3. release, which does the normal thing
• and ofcourse misc fixes for known and potential bugs

Warning: version 2.0 changes the patch format (old patches should still load, ultimately depending on the host you are using; proceed with caution)

Changelog

2.0.0: migrated to use new framework (knobs, MIDI CC, new patch format, etc), added dither and peak markers

1.9.5.1: match attack to release, display scale can be halved, fixed drawing problem on Win64, offset meter top by a pixel for easier reduction metering

1.9.3: fixes an issue that caused some other plugins to misbehave and/or crash when or after 4L2 was also used

1.9.2a: forgot to rename control as reported to host

1.9.2: rethought the reduction/compensation controls after user feedback

1.9.1: 20 pixels narrower GUI, slight graphics tweaks, same sound

1.9.0: initial beta for the new v2. Please report any bugs you might find.