NUGEN Audio's ISL 2 Limiter Used On Cast Recording Of 'The Light Princess'

NUGEN Audio has announced that mix engineer Marcel van Limbeek has chosen the company's ISL 2 plug-in to provide real-time, broadcast-quality true peak limiting for a range of music mix and mastering projects.

As longtime studio and monitor engineer for recording artist Tori Amos, van Limbeek most recently used ISL 2 in a hybrid digital/analog workflow for Amos' latest album, a studio recording of her music for the stage production of "The Light Princess" featuring the original London cast.

"I can't recommend NUGEN Audio and ISL 2 highly enough, not only as a vocal limiter but for any music recording project," van Limbeek said.
"I especially appreciate the transparency of the tool for controlling dynamic range in a very unobtrusive way. Other limiters can distort the sound, but ISL 2 enables us to remove peaky frequencies or sounds that are popping out a bit too much, without changing the original timbre and artistic intent of the music." 

Van Limbeek has more than 25 years of experience creating high-quality sound for both studio and live recordings. Since 1994 he has collaborated with Amos and Mark Hawley, her husband and house engineer, to record, mix, and master 15 of her albums and DVD releases, four of which were Grammy-nominated.

For "The Light Princess," van Limbeek and Hawley recorded all vocals using Avid Pro Tools and then processed the audio through an analog workflow that began with a Neve 1084 mic equalizer (EQ) for high-pass filtering.

Next, the audio was processed through a Universal Audio compressor and then output to a Manley Massive Passive EQ. The result was recorded back into Pro Tools and put through a final pass with ISL 2, which removed any transient audio peaks that might have added unwanted harshness to the mix.

For particularly dynamic vocals, van Limbeek applied ISL 2 prior to the analog chain to provide upfront limiting and ensure that the analog compressor would not apply excessive gain reduction. 

"On The Light Princess, we were working with incredibly talented singers that are trained to perform without amplification in a theater. With a mix of voices ranging from very soft to much louder, this can create dynamics challenges in a studio setting," van Limbeek added.
"ISL 2 was the perfect tool for reducing the peaks in the performances, and it was ideal for our hybrid digital/analog workflow. We were able to create a rich, warm sound with the analog equipment, and then use ISL 2 to remove unwanted frequencies in a very surgical, precise way."

www.nugenaudio.com

(MH/CD)