ZL Audio has released its limiter plugin “ZL Limiter” as a free download!
In this article, we cover the download details and an overview of ZL Limiter.
1. What Is ZL Audio “ZL Limiter”?
ZL Limiter is a free, open-source limiter plugin featuring True Peak limiting and up to 32x oversampling. It offers transient control via adjustable lookahead and adaptive recovery, stereo processing that lets you set the allowed difference between channels, and a real-time scrolling waveform display with loudness metering. The current version is 0.0.1 (a Pre-release on GitHub), and the developer notes that, as this is the first version, it may contain bugs.
Key Features
- True Peak limiting to suppress inter-sample peaks
- Up to 32x oversampling
- Ceiling: sets the maximum output level
- Lookahead / Recovery: lookahead time of the main envelope and adaptive recovery time
- Attack / Release: adjust the support envelope responsible for sustained gain reduction
- Stereo Delta: sets how much gain-reduction difference is allowed between channels
- Delta listening (audition what the limiter removes)
- Scrolling waveform analyzer showing input, output and gain-reduction curves
- Meters displaying True Peak, Correlation, LUFS-M/S/I and LRA
- Linked mode that ties input gain to output compensation
- Preset manager
- Plugin formats: VST3 (macOS, Windows, Linux), AU (macOS), LV2 (Windows, Linux) *AAX is not supported
- License: AGPLv3 (open source)
2. How to Download and Install ZL Limiter
You can get the installer from the “Installation” section on the official page, either via the GitHub releases page or a direct download link. The developer states that the installers are not notarized, so please verify the download source before use.
That wraps up the free release of ZL Limiter. If you are looking for a free, transparent True Peak limiter with detailed loudness metering, it is well worth a try.