My limiter is eating the punch out of my drums. What do I change?

Why the punch goes first

Punch is the gap between a drum's initial peak and the level that follows it. A limiter exists to stop peaks, and the tallest peaks in a mix are the kick and the snare. The harder it works, the more of that gap it closes.

Back off first

This is the fix that always works. Each decibel taken off the loudness target is roughly a decibel of transient given back. If the master is aimed at a streaming service, the extra loudness was going to be turned down in playback anyway.

Then the limiter's own controls

• Release. Too short, and the gain snaps back between hits, which distorts low notes. Too long, and the level stays down after each hit, so the drums duck the rest of the mix. Start at 50 to 100 ms and listen to the space after the snare.
• Lookahead. More lookahead lets the gain change begin before the peak arrives. That is smoother and softens the front of the hit. Less keeps more of the attack and risks distortion.
• Stereo link. Fully linked, a hit on one side turns both channels down. Unlinking slightly lets the other side keep its level.
• Character. A limiter with a punchy or transparent mode trades these in a preset way.

Take the peaks off earlier

A limiter reacts to the highest peak in the whole mix. Reduce that peak before the master and the limiter has less to do.

• Clip the drum bus by 1 to 3 dB. A clipper shaves the tip of a transient so briefly that the hit still sounds intact, where a limiter turns the whole signal down around it.
• Compress the drum bus with a slow attack, 20 to 30 ms. The transient passes and the body is controlled.
• Check the sub bass. Low-frequency energy uses headroom. A kick with a long sub tail makes the limiter work on every beat.

In Zammoth

The Limiter has a release from 1 to 1000 ms (50 by default), a lookahead from 0.5 to 3 ms, a stereo link and, on the master, the loudness target. It has three styles, Modern, Transparent and Punchy. The style is set by asking the engineer, not from the device's face:

The Clipper's display shows how many decibels of peak it removed without lowering the loudness, which is how much less the limiter has to do. The engineer's measurements of the master include a flag for over-limiting. See the Limiter reference and the Clipper reference.