Look-ahead limiters remade the music business when they are first introduced in the late 90s. In some cases, that wasn’t a good thing, since engineers now had the ability to make their mixes louder than ever, and that’s exactly what they did. That said, when a look-ahead-style limiter is used gently, it can allow the mixer to raise the level without taking too much of the life away. But gentle just doesn’t work for some engineers, and that’s where HUM Audio Devices LAAL limiter plugin comes in.
The company placed a “fully analog look ahead delay line” into a discrete circuit with the highest quality of modern analog components on its hardware unit. When they did, they created a limiter that delivers loudness without the typical brickwall deadness that comes when it’s pushed too hard. Now thanks to Brainworx’s digital expertise, a plugin version is now available.
LAAL stands for Look Ahead Analog Limiter. In it the detection circuit uses a fully analog delay line (0.2 ms) ‘looks ahead’ with the dynamic transient function to respond intelligently to signal peaks before they occur (the secret sauce of today’s modern digital limiters). This results in responsive peak limiting without harshness or distortion while reaching your desired RMS levels and loudness targets and preserving detail, air, and low-end punch.
Normally, limiters of this type use soft clipping to achieve the desired levels, but LAAL uses unique and sophisticated detection and gain stage circuits instead. And that’s what makes LAAL sound different than other look-ahead limiters.
LAAL has a lot of other useful features as well, include pre-limiter Stereo Width functionality to maximise stereo imaging, a Dynamic Transient mode to preserve transients, TX-Drive connected to the Transformer button for a range of different colors, M/S Processing, and True Peak Limiting.
LAAL currently on sale for just $49.99 (normally $199). It’s available for both Mac and PC and on all plugin platforms. You can find out more here, or watch the video below.
