George Yohng's W1 Limiter VST
W1 Limiter is a clone of Waves L1, with identical output.

I have not seen any Waves source code, and this result was obtained by tweaking 4Front YLimiter, by doing the following:

• Release curve simplified
• Release time multiplied 3 times (see notes below)
• Softening circuit filter changed

Waves L1 famous limiter (and thus W1 - for compatibility reasons) uses three times longer actual release time than standard RT60 metric. This means that if you set 50ms release in the limiter, it will actually yield with 150ms standard RT60 release time.

Since this cloning could be done, you may have no doubt that in the future I'll provide you with a commercial limiter, that beats everything currently available (I have prototypes already).

If you are unsure which release time to set, consider using the default release time. Different engineers recommend different values, the default value is chosen reasonably to provide a smooth limiting for most typical usage of the limiter.

How to check this limiter compatibility to L1?
Process the same sound with L1 and with this limiter, using the same threshold and release settings.

During measurement, check that both of the sounds are aligned properly. You can insert a single test peak in the beginning, and after processing - clip the sound, so that it starts exactly from the peak.

Subtract the results and see the residue.

Note, that you can't set sliders exactly to the same values on both limiters. 30ms release may mean actually 30.01234ms, so due to such minor differences, there will be small residue left.

If you find it necessary, please, leave your comments in the form below.


Macintosh port and AudioUnit component is a courtesy of Dave Gamble.