Help in Understanding Limiters | Algorithm Design | Forum

Hi all, I’m creating a metronome app for mobile devices and I would like to incorporate a simple brick wall limiter to keep the sounds from clipping/distorting when there is more than one sound playing at a time. Currently, I am dividing the volume of each sound by the total number of sounds playing to guarantee that if the sounds combine they can never clip, but this causes a drastic drop in volume when sounds play individually.

I have read Will’s Designing Audio Effect Plug-Ins in C++ book but I’m still a little confused about how a limiter doesn’t simply chop off the signal like it would if it clipped digitally.

For example, if a limiter has zero attack and zero release so that there’s no delay in reacting to the waveform, then with an infinite ratio preventing signals from going above the threshold it seems the end result would be like this:

 

However, I know that is not the case with limiters, otherwise there would be no point to using them and everyone would just let signals clip digitally if the result was the same. So I’m trying to understand what limiters (brick wall limiters in particular) do to preserve the original shape in order to prevent this kind of clipping/distortion from happening.

Thanks!