Audio Science

Chances are, if you’re already producing music, that you have run into the issue of compression, limiting, and general loudness. Not only does the right average volume level keep your tracks at the same volume as all the commercial songs, it is also more convincing to listen to. There are a lot of places that cover the basics of compression and limiting, but the fact that you’re reading this blog probably means that you’re already aware of some of them.

Multiband limiting is where the frequency range of the music being limited is split into 2 or more seperate ranges, with seperate limiters processing each range. This means that high low-frequency sounds (such as bass) don’t make the higher-frequencies “pump”, which allows you to squeeze more volume out of your songs while keeping the sound good. Propellerhead’s Reason 3.0 comes with a number of high-quality mastering devices that will help you acheive good final results with your tracks, and among them is the MClass Maximizer, the all-important brickwall mastering limiter of Reason. In this article, I’ll show you how to route 3 devices together inside Reason’s Combinator to make a multichannel limiter.

Creating a 2-Band Limiter in Reason 3

1: Start by creating a Combinator in Reason 3.0. Doing your work inside the Combinator will allow you to save your work as an effects patch to be pulled up any time you need a multiband limiter.

2: Create an MClass Stereo Imager.

3: While holding down Shift (to keep Reason from auto-routing new devices), create, in this order, an MClass Maximizer, an MClass Stereo Imager, and another MClass Maximizer.

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4: Route the output of the first Stereo Imager to the input of the second Stereo Imager and set the Seperate Out of the first one to “Hi Band”, and the Seperate Out of the second Stereo Imager to “Lo Band”.

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5: Route the Seperate Out of Stereo Imager 1 to the input of Maximizer 1, and repeat with Stereo Imager 2 & Maximizer 2.

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6: Connect the outputs of Maximizer 1 & 2 to merger channels on the Spider Audio Merger, then connect the output of the Spider Audio to the “From Devices” section on the Combinator.

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7: You’re done! Make sure to keep the Crossover settings the same on both Stereo Imagers, and the input levels the same on the Maximizers. If you make either of these settings different between the units, the EQ of the song will become messed up.

If you would like, you can download the finished example Combinator patch for this article here.