Hellos, I have Live7, Reason, & FL Studio, & I'd like to know which has the highest quality expander for pre-mastering? How can I set them up to do multi-band expanding please? Links to other posts & configuration files would be great please!

(I'm assuming you have Reason 6+ or Reason+Record).

Reason has a gate/expander built into every mix channel. There's a discussion about the SSL-modeled gate/expander on their older RecordU tutorial page:
http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/record-u/index.cfm?fu seaction=get_article&article=part3&short=4D5FC1E0

To do multi-band expansion of a sound just use a Spider Audio splitter to take the output of a Mix channel and send it to 2 or more new Mix channels.

Then on the new Mix channels, enable the eqs to isolate the freq you want to expand then enable expansion in the dynamics section.

Blend it with the original unprocessed Mix channel and you're done.

Thanks for the tip! Should be very useful in the future, but...
Problem is that is not what I wanted to use an expander for; I wanted to increase the dynamic rage of all those awful squashed MP3s we are forced to buy. I DO NOT want to "reduce volume in pauses", I want to reduce volumes when it is loud; eg bring a -0.2db peak down to say -.08db, then -1.0db down to -2.2 or so.

I've written a VST to do this in SynthMaker; the compressor/expander works great, the rest (preset manager, other design decisions) are not done yet. It is only single-precision float, & I have a DJ project I want to finish in a few days, before I can finish my VST. I was seeing if my DAWs had a faster & perhaps better solution to increasing dynamic range.

cheers

Check out Terry West's ReLife: http://www.terrywest.nl/utils.html

Does exactly what you want. Or close. And especially awesome for the price - which is free!

It is very good; I've used it last year on tracks. I was hoping for more granular control. & it is not free-free; he asks for donation so if I start using it semi-professionally then I should donate.

Hi re8, it sounds like your personal need is pretty specific. I doubt there is a built-in solution to any of the original tools (Live, Reason, FL) that you originally asked. That Terry West tool might be the best bet -- how much is your time worth to make a complete custom tool versus donating to Terry. That's the trade-off I'd be looking at were I in your position.

Good luck.

All 3 have expanders; I'm looking for experiences; I'm sure out of the 1,000,000 users these 3 have combined someone tried to do the same thing as I.

If not, then I guess I should release my VST...