BRICKWALL LIMITER.

1.the brickwall limiter should be the last effect in your master bus chain, to control short peaks and avoid any clip-ping of the signal;
2. typically, you will set the max level as – 0.1 or - 0.2 dB FS, as some older DA converters can cause distortion when the signal reaches 0 dB FS;
3. up to 2-3 dB limiting can be almost undetectable and help you gain some additional loudness, but make sure there is no distortion on the loudest passages;
4.set the release time as short as possible to avoid hearable pumping artifacts, but beware that very short release times can also cause undesired distortion;
5. clipping on the master out should generally be avoided: do not try to boost the volume of your production to be the loudest of all, but go for the best sound quality you can get, at the loudest level you can reach without distor-tion/clipping;
6.clipping on single tracks during mixing (like on drums) while keeping other tracks like the vocals clean is however an option, if you are looking for a certain aggressive sound on the drums (like in hip-hop, techno, etc.); so you can have single tracks clipping, even the drum/percussion group clipping, but avoid master out clipping;
7.in certain cases, moderate clipping is also used instead of limiting when mastering through an analogue effect chain; this might sound ok on high-end AD converters (for example by Metric Halo, Lynx, etc.), and rather ugly on cheap ones.