Sonnox Oxford Limiter v3 | An HONEST Review
When discussing VST limiters / mastering plugins, it’s hard to go 5 minutes without mentioning either Waves’ L2 / L3 mastering plugin or Sonnox’s Oxford Limiter. Both these plugins are based on a similar philosophy, to add significant volume and presence, while avoiding the jarring, stifled effect of a hard-clipping limiter.
However, there seems to be a substantial amount of users that tend to gravitate towards the Oxford Limiter over Waves’ limiter plugin line. So why is the Oxford Limiter such an acclaimed, popular choice for musicians and engineers? After recently testing v3 of this product, the answer is abundantly clear.
Oxford Limiter v3 has a no-nonsense, ocean-blue GUI with a clear, concise layout. There are no complicated spectrographs or other visualizers, which keeps the CPU and latency to a absolute minimum. With it’s simple, intuitive design, it’s easy to dive right into its various limiting controls.
If used with care, the Oxford limiter is capable of astounding results. After testing this plugin on a range of sounds and genres, it’s a notably less aggressive limiter than some commercial limiters, and I’d categorize it as a more “transparent” limiter overall. Although if required, its nifty “enhance” feature is capable of giving a more coloured effect with a deeper, fuller low-end.
The plugin can be split into 3 main sections; the processing controls, the alluring “enhance” control and several further recon/dither/true peak controls. The left section of the plugin consists of the pre-processing controls; threshold, input gain, attack, release time, soft-knee control and an auto-gain button. The attack time control here is particularly interesting, as it allows you to “let through” heavier transients for the enhance feature to work its magic on.
Let’s enhance
A major selling point of the Oxford Limiter is the intriguing “enhance” control, a feature found all the way back in the first released version of the plugin. Sonnox state this increases the perceived loudness by modifying the dynamic content, introducing harmonics and additional sample limiting.
From my experience, this feature is definitely more effective when added to an entire track mix as opposed to individual elements of a song (although it also sounded fantastic on full drum tracks). When added to full mixes, the Oxford Limiter increases the perceived loudness and density considerably, and in all honesty the results blew me away.
However, if you’re not careful the enhance feature can cause slight distortion (especially if “safe mode” is deactivated) so pay extra attention when using this control.
Oxford Limiter’s additional features also add a ton of sonic flexibility to your mastering processing. The true peak options are particularly interesting, allowing you to actually detect inter-sample peaks. For example, let’s say there are 44,000 samples a second in your track, the true peaks of the incoming peak might not necessarily land precisely on a given sample. With “Auto Comp” selected, the plugin subtly manages these inter-sample peaks. Granted, this level of accuracy won’t make a stark difference to the output, however it’s a fantastic setting to finetune your mastered track.
There is also an excellent dither section, with options for bit-depth, noise-shaping curves and the depth of the curve you choose.
After experimenting with this plugin, I’m left scratching my head wondering “why haven’t I tried this sooner?” The results are punchy and dynamic while still retaining sonic transparency.
Sonnox describe their Oxford Limiter as a “true peak limiter that offers recently enhanced levels of processing and metering accuracy”, and in this case I’d have to agree with them.
Sound Quality
Ease of Use
Features
Click here for more info / specifications on Oxford Limiter v3.
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