Dan Worrall, informative even without words

[bitflipper]

Just an un-commented video of Dan mastering his own stuff. How you feel about the music is irrelevant, just appreciate those crispy transients!

A couple takeaways for me. First, notice how most of the time the limiter isn't doing anything at all. I've always believed that if a good mix stands on its own before mastering, the limiter's mainly just a volume control. As you can see, he's adding a lot of gain because he mixes with gobs of headroom.

Second, note that he uses no lookahead. I don't have an explanation for this other than if you're not continuously driving the master above the threshold you really don't need lookahead. I'm guessing in his examples it wouldn't make much audible difference either way.