Leapwing LimitOne

Audio limiting is the art of managing and controlling sound energy. Often the goal is to increase loudness by changing level dynamics in the most transparent way possible. Historically, this was done by using an electric circuit that follows the envelope of an audio signal and steers a variable gain to reduce peaks and boost low levels. These methods were later emulated in the digital domain and many variations and flavors have been created since.

LimitOne is different. Our goal was not to eliminate all other clippers or limiters out there, as they all add their own color, but to develop a novel approach and do things in a different way, allowing you to get results that weren’t previously possible.

We found inspiration in two-stage limiter methods and multi-band compressor designs, in how clipping adds color and punch, and we also took note of the problems and artifacts that some processing introduces. Then we imagined what an easy-to-use tool would look like if we would not limit ourselves to existing methods. This led to the idea of a hybrid algorithm that combines the advantages of digital signal processing in the frequency domain and time domain.