T-RackS Stealth Limiter is an ultra-transparent mastering peak limiter. It's a versatile sonic ninja of a mixing and mastering tool that features an advanced inter-sample peak limiting algorithm that lets you turn up the loudness of your mixes while still maintaining a clean a sound that’s full of dynamic range and sonic breathing room. T-RackS Stealth Limiter is your new go-to mastering peak limiter when you want impressive loudness without the damaging side effects of traditional processors.

The Loudness Wars

The past few decades have seen volume levels rise at an alarming rate. Loudness of mixed and mastered audio material has become a de-facto standard for contemporary music production. This quest for loudness has come at a significant cost — as producers and engineers strive to remain competitive they employ methods of extreme compression and limiting that, though they make a mix louder, also impart an unmistakable mark of residual distortion, sonic flatness and loss of overall emotion. When used heavily, these processors flatten out the music’s dynamics and get rid of much of the music’s magic and emotion when passing between various sections of a song. Our goal was to provide a new kind of processor for the final peak limiting stage of the mastering process that’s able to impart loudness while maintaining more perceived dynamic range than other limiters and compressors.

A Stealth Weapon

At a basic level, T-RackS Stealth Limiter provides an impressive increase in loudness without the discernable effects of compression. Simply put, it’s the most transparent, clear and loud software mastering peak limiter available. And this is all thanks to its smart level-tracking algorithm. It works under the hood to reduce levels below the volume ceiling moment-by-moment instead of applying traditional look-ahead envelope-based fast attack compression. This algorithm doesn’t sound like a compressor, and that’s because it’s not a compressor! T-RackS Stealth Limiter’s algorithm tracks the level and keeps it under control while simultaneously preserving the perceived sense of dynamics.

A New Approach

With traditional mastering processes, it’s normal to push the volume level towards a -0.1dB or even 0.0dB ceiling. Spikes above this ceiling are suppressed via the use of hard limiters and clippers. Yet these methods only ensure a stable digital level, they do not guarantee undistorted playback once the music is translated into an analog signal.

This is because the process of playback involves a number of conversion processes that, though the digital waveform may be below 0.0dB, can cause the analog waveform to exceed this threshold and introduce unwanted distortion and fuzz.

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