Protect everyone's ears with a limiter

Loud music and noise are one of the biggest causes of permanent hearing loss and tinnitus (noise in your ears or head).

As in live-coding we deal with the unexpected, not-controlled feedback or mistyped gain values can create a very loud output, which can damage your ears and those of your audience.

It’s for that that a limiter is a must-have. In this guide, you will learn to limit the output of SuperCollider using the Quark StageMaster.

What is StageMaster?

StageMaster is a light mastering chain for use during live coding performance in SuperCollider. It’s made my Calum Gunn and it’s based on StageLimiter by Batuhan Ozkurt.

How to start using StageMaster

First, install StageMaster by evaluating the following code in SuperCollider:

Quarks.install("https://github.com/calumgunn/StageMaster.git");

Then, include the following line in your SuperDirt startup file, inside the s.waitForBoot block:

StageMaster.activate(numChannels: 2);

Note

If you are outputting more than two channels, you have to put the corresponding number as after the parameter numChannels. Otherwise, those will be missing from the output.

And that’s it! You can now rest assured that your maximum output will never go above 100%.

Customizing the output chain

StageMaster removes the DC offset, then makes the mix more consistent by compressing it a little, then adds some brightness with a high-shelf EQ, and lastly and most importantly, limits the sound signal.

If you know what you’re doing, you can tweak the default parameters of StageMaster. Apart from numChannels, there are also compThreshold, limiterLevel, and highEndDb.

Specifically, if you want to remove the compressor, you should set compThreshold to 1, and if you want to remove the EQ, you should set highEndDb to 0. That would look like the following:

StageMaster.activate(numChannels: 2, compThreshold: 1, highEndDb: 0);