Related to this: Way to limit maximum output volume - #21 by flower
What about a hardware limiter for such audio workshops? Would this be a good solution? Any advise for hardware? How about small mixers?
what about a dirty one so people get aural feedback? a passive one is possible, a few clipping diodes followed by a voltage divider (with a pot) so it never goes loud 
sorry I couldn’t resist
The joke would have been better if there was also a more serious answer attached to it.
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SafetyNet Quark is a pretty good solution on the software side. Hardware limiter is not necessary compared to any other audio source, I think.
It’s not only about Supercollider but also other software. That’s why I’m thinking about a hardware limiter.
Let’s say every audio is routed via a mixer with a limiter, so children can use headphones safely.
If safety is the priority, think if you need headphones, because this context with several software just adds to the risks. A limiter will just catch extreme audio peaks, it will not smooth out relative differences in loudness.
Not sure if such a music lesson / workshop works without headphones…
Here they use headphones
Coming back to this topic, I noticed that there are headphones for children with a max of 85db, like the Philips SHK2000BL. Anyone knows if such headphones with such max db limit are available for serious studio usage?
AFAIK software filters can be dangerous for loud peaks with bad values, so I wonder why those Ugens accept those bad values (for modulation?). In Daws this isn’t a problem I can imagine, as the values can’t go lower then a set point.
I don’t really have any experience with the headphones you are talking about. As far as the general issue, I think it should be divided in two separate issues:
Preventing bad values - use SafeyNet (if you are in SC) which is quite effective
EDIT: got myself confused (see below) - yes you can use a limiter to turn down the volume.
Loud volume - preventing loud volume cannot really be obtained with a traditional brickwall limiter (hardware or software) which prevents clipping the signal but not making it really loud, ie. the difference between clipping the output (no limiter) and brickwall limiting the output is primarily one of sonic characteristics (avoid distortion) rather than one of loudness.
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This would depend on settings, wouldn’t it? A typical limiter plugin features makeup gain – first attenuate such that everything is quieter than the threshold, then amplify to push this all up closer to full scale. It should certainly be possible to disable the makeup gain and force the limiter to reduce the output level rather than squash all the dynamics upward. (Limiter.ar, e.g., leaves the makeup gain up to the user to implement.) Or if it doesn’t have a makeup gain switch, there should be an output level fader. It’s correct that the typical usage of a limiter is to get a louder final result, but that’s not really because of the limiting process itself.
hjh
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Yes you are right, I got myself confused thinking about it.
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