It's just another tool, a very fine one, that may very well prove better than any other sometimes. Yes, I don't have any illusions that one limiter will be able to fit all tasks. In any case, the Pendulum PL-2 will continue to do better than both of them on many types of mixes and will remain my main limiter. Slate said the new version has significant improvements, so it may prove to be useful enough to replace SplitComp for some mix limiting for me. SplitComp sounds almost identical to this old FG-X version except in transient sharpness that seemed hyped in some of the FG-X examples, and doesn't exhibit artifacts that the sample posted here does. I posted comparisons of SplitComp and FG-X on the Gear Shoot Outs forum a while ago. Such artifacts do affect my ability to enjoy the song, just like numerous other types of unwanted processing artifacts. That 'little bit' of improvement is actually huge to me, most of all the transient response part.

To finish, since these audio demos, the algorithms behind FG-X have improved, as we were told by Slate Digital, so it's better to wait for a release version to make comparisons and comments.īUT, I think your version sounds GREAT :-). There are others tools for that, but at the cost of some saturation/distortion, as : Sonnox Limiter (use the Enhance control), Voxengo Elephant 3 (Clip mode), IK Multimedia Brickwall Limiter (with the Advanced and Sat modes), to name some. They are more in the 'little gain added but transparent process' category. For getting things LOUD while retaining PUNCH, they are not the good contenders. I'm no expert but that's how the FG-X works basically (for the gain stage part).Īlso, the competition is not only L2 and UAD. Next, it's not a standard limiting process, because it works out the transients in a different way than a classic mastering limiter.

So with only a limiter, you could not come close.

To begin, the FG-X features a compressor stage, and a gain (limiter-like) stage.

Slate fg x vs ozone