Next, we need to guard ourselves against overshoots which may cause distortion.
Only perform this step if your aim is to achieve a very loud sound. It may reduce the sound quality, and make the result sound less constant instead of more constant - even though the actual output volume becomes more constant.
If all the multiband channels have a peak simultaneously, large peaks can still be present in the
output signal of the multiband compressor. The limit output slider sets the maximum volume
that is allowed to come out of the multiband compressor. 100% means that all the channels have a
peak simultaneously. Setting it to - for example - 50% means that, when more than 50% of the maximum
possible output level is measured, the multiband compressor takes other measures to reduce the
output signal.
The measures that are taken are:
Clipping is performed on all the channels that contribute to the large peak.
The amplification of all the channels is reduced slightly.
Using a very low value for limit output may disturb the smoothing effect of the multiband
compressor/limiter and even cause pumping. This is especially the case for music which contains
loud bass peaks (such as dance music). For such types of music, values above 70% give the best
results - but the effect on peaks is very small. For other types of music, values around 20-50%
generally give good results.
