Elevate Mastering Limiter for Bitwig

Tutorial | Jan 17, 2025

In this video, I attempted to replicate the Newfangled Audio's Elevate plugin using Bitwig Studio by creating a similar mastering setup with a filter bank, compressor, and clipper. I utilized impulse responses for band splitting, which helped maintain CPU efficiency, and included modular options for compression and limiting to tailor the audio to personal taste. The project file is available for download in the description for viewers to try and provide feedback.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

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• Download Elevate-Bitwig

Summary #

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

In this video, I dive into replicating the functionality of Newfangled Audio's "Elevate" inside Bitwig Studio, specifically using beta five. It's a relatively short video where I explore how you can emulate this sophisticated mastering plugin or final limiter with Bitwig’s tools, and I’m providing this setup for free in the video description for anyone who wants to try it out.

To start, I explain what "Elevate" does: at its core, it's a combination of a few processes geared towards mastering. It begins with a filter bank, which is its distinctive feature, having either 62 or 26 bands with unique spacing known as mel spacing. I try to replicate this using impulse responses, which not only mimic the filter structure but are also CPU-friendly due to their short length of about 25 milliseconds. This is ideal for band splitting as Inspire different bands of audio are separated effectively without affecting the phase.

Post the filter bank section, "Elevate" moves into an EQ section—not a typical EQ, but one allowing volume adjustment of each bandpass filter. Following that, every Bandpass filter has its own limiter. Additionally, there's a transient shaper for tweaking transients to avoid harshness, and you end with a clipper to control clipping from a hard to soft approach.

In my Bitwig replication, I go from these impulse responses directly into a compressor rather than an instant limiter. This choice comes from sometimes disliking how limiters aggressively duck signals. The compressor, with its adjustable ratio, threshold, attack, and release settings, allows a more controlled and modular approach, letting you switch between characteristics of a compressor and limiter to suit your preference.

I opted to leave out the transient shaper since the compressor can tweak attacks through its settings, simplifying things. Finally, I run everything through an over clipper, with a threshold to manage levels without distortion. Completing the setup, I use a time shift to balance the impulse response delay, ensuring the phase is untouched. You can toggle polarity to confirm that the original and wet signals cancel each other effectively, indicating accuracy.

Throughout the video, I demonstrate how this setup works with a track, showcasing manipulation through the input, threshold, attack, release, and ratio settings across filtered bands. I show how you can adjust the delta to clip selectively and advise using an over at 0 dB to make sure levels don't peak.

In conclusion, I welcome feedback on this recreation of Newfangled Audio's Elevate using Bitwig, inviting viewers to download and experience it themselves. I appreciate everyone who watched, encouraging them to like, subscribe, and share their thoughts about this project. Thank you for watching, and see you in the next video.

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Yo, folks, welcome back to another video on this Friday, actually a short video.
[00:00:04] But some people wrote to me if I can try and replicate Newfangled Audios Elevate inside
[00:00:10] of Bitwig Studio, and I tried to do this and I kind of succeeded in a way.
[00:00:15] And I want to give you also a free reset in the description below if you want to download
[00:00:20] this and want to try this out for yourself.
[00:00:22] I made this here in beta five, so you need, of course, to use beta five for this.
[00:00:29] But first, I want to show you what elevate actually does.
[00:00:32] It's a combination or it's more like a mastering plug in or a final limiter, a master limiter.
[00:00:39] But it does a combination of multiple things.
[00:00:41] So you have here a filter bank in the beginning.
[00:00:45] That's the first special thing, 62 or 26 bands, very special spacing between the filters here.
[00:00:58] It's the male spacing.
[00:00:59] You can read this up in the Wikipedia what this means.
[00:01:04] So I try to use impulse responses here to kind of clone this.
[00:01:08] And then this also works.
[00:01:10] It also looks very nice if you analyze here how these filters look like in a singled out.
[00:01:17] They are kind of three angular ish at the top.
[00:01:21] So they are very good for band splitting.
[00:01:25] Then we go straight into a limiter or in a queue.
[00:01:30] So the queue, it's not really in a queue.
[00:01:32] It's actually you can change the volume of each of these bandpass filter.
[00:01:36] So it's not really in a queue.
[00:01:39] And also on each of these bandpass filters or channels, you have then a limiter.
[00:01:46] Then you go into a transient shaper so you can increase the transients here or remove
[00:01:50] the transients to get rid of some maybe some harsh clicks and pops here in the top.
[00:01:57] And then it goes straight into a clipper.
[00:02:00] And here you can go from a hard clip to a soft clip more or less.
[00:02:06] And that's kind of it.
[00:02:08] There's probably something between the lines like some kind of algorithm.
[00:02:14] I don't know maybe some different over sampling, maybe a bit of magic here and there, maybe
[00:02:19] some different settings.
[00:02:20] What I would say in, so from the rough idea, it's kind of exactly this.
[00:02:27] So it's a filter bank, a band splitter going into a limiter and then into a transient
[00:02:32] shaper and then into a clipper at the end.
[00:02:34] Okay.
[00:02:35] So that's what this plug in does kind of.
[00:02:39] And I tried to do this like I said before here, I'm using impulse responses to actually
[00:02:47] make these band splits, which kinds of also makes it very CPU friendly in a way, because
[00:02:53] yes, these are very short 25 milliseconds here.
[00:02:58] And they're exactly the same.
[00:03:01] I think you can even use here an EQ analyzer to curve analyzer also at the end here.
[00:03:12] And this is actually the right, yeah, base, it's just, you can see here, the face is untouched.
[00:03:19] So it doesn't do anything to the face, even though we have here different splitters.
[00:03:24] We can remove here certain bands.
[00:03:26] You can see down here, we have then there a different outcome.
[00:03:30] So this is basically the EQ, right?
[00:03:31] So this is the EQ part of this, uh, elevate here where you can change the volume of different
[00:03:38] band splitters and it gives you this EQ thing kind of response.
[00:03:44] So yeah, this is the band splitting part.
[00:03:46] And then I go straight from the band splitter or from this impulse response into a compressor
[00:03:52] instead of a limiter.
[00:03:54] And I did this because I sometimes don't like how limiters behave.
[00:03:58] They are instantaneously, you know, all kind of aggressive ducking the signal.
[00:04:04] So here with this, you can pull up the ratio all the way to 100%, but 100% you have basically
[00:04:11] a limiter.
[00:04:12] But then you can also pull this down and maybe ease out the responsiveness of the compressor.
[00:04:17] You can also change here the attack and the release of the compressor.
[00:04:21] So you can switch between the compressor and a limiter and dial it in to your taste.
[00:04:27] So it's a bit more, yeah, more modular in a way.
[00:04:33] Then you have also here a threshold for the compressor.
[00:04:36] So you can pull down the threshold instead of pushing it into the limiter like you do
[00:04:42] it on the "newfangled audio" here, because here there is no, no real threshold.
[00:04:49] You have here like this limiter gain and you push basically the material into the limiter.
[00:04:54] You can do this here too by increasing the input volume, but you can also go the other
[00:04:59] way around and pull down the threshold.
[00:05:01] So this is also possible.
[00:05:04] Then the transient shaper part I left completely out because we have here the compressor and
[00:05:09] then you can tweak kind of the attacks with the compressor attack and release.
[00:05:15] So it's just one thing instead of limiter and transient shaper I'm using here, just a compressor.
[00:05:21] And then I go straight into an over clipper here.
[00:05:25] And there's also your threshold.
[00:05:27] So if you push this up, a threshold is basically zero dB.
[00:05:32] And yeah, that's kind of it.
[00:05:33] At the end I have a time shift here to just to compensate for the impulse response timing
[00:05:39] here.
[00:05:41] And I also made this pretty precise so you can use the mix knob here and invert the polarity
[00:05:48] and it cancels the original signal with the wet signal.
[00:05:52] So this kind of works also.
[00:05:55] So let's remove this here for a moment.
[00:05:57] I want to show you how it sounds.
[00:05:59] So this is here some kind of track.
[00:06:02] It's probably not the best example because it's already pretty compressed.
[00:06:10] But I can show you here some examples.
[00:06:13] So this is here the first band zero hertz to one on two hertz.
[00:06:19] And what you can do now is here use the input, right?
[00:06:22] You can see we push here the gain up into the limiter.
[00:06:26] So the limiter goes up into the threshold, and then you have the ratio here, attack,
[00:06:36] and release.
[00:06:37] You can dial this in.
[00:06:38] And this is the input threshold, attack, release, ratio and so on.
[00:06:40] It's all the same on all these band pass filters or all these layers.
[00:06:47] So it's kind of the same as you can also just pull down the input here and pull down the
[00:06:53] threshold and then enable the markup here, or make up, not markup, make up.
[00:07:02] So you increase the volume or you compensate basically for the threshold.
[00:07:14] And then you go into here this over clip out then at the end, right?
[00:07:18] Once we can pull down the threshold, maybe you actually can't see it.
[00:07:31] But what you can do then is you can push here the delta button and then pull down the threshold
[00:07:36] here.
[00:07:37] And then you can hear when delta gives you basically sounds, this means you are clipping
[00:07:46] on some of these layers.
[00:08:04] Yeah, that's basically it.
[00:08:10] Maybe I should use here the end.
[00:08:14] That's actually a good idea.
[00:08:16] At the end, you should use maybe also an over at 0 dB with no make up.
[00:08:27] Just to make sure you don't run into the red here.
[00:08:31] Yeah, and that's called elevate, elevate Bitwig, like I said, I put this in the description
[00:08:38] below so you can download it, try it out for yourself, maybe give me some feedback.
[00:08:43] That's my, yeah, that's my take on elevate from Newfangled Audio.
[00:08:51] That's it for this video.
[00:08:52] Thanks for watching.
[00:08:53] Leave a like, leave a subscription.
[00:08:55] Let me know what you think.
[00:08:56] See you in the next video.
[00:08:57] Bye.
[00:08:57] [BLANK_AUDIO]