What does Waves Vitamin *actually* do? It ain't no saturator...

[imrae]

The marketing material and discussion around Vitamin strongly implies that it's an exciter, using compression and saturation to add harmonics and increase energy in a multiband parallel chain.

It isn't. Ignore the multiband aspect for a moment by setting a single wide frequency band. Feeding sine waves into this band does not add harmonics. Only by boosting the levels right into hard-clipping do I get a steady wave to "saturate".

It's also not a regular compressor. The level coming out of a band seems to be linearly related to the level coming in over a wide range when the input is steady; there isn't a conventional transfer function. Downwards compression would have "diminishing returns" at the louder end, upwards/parallel compression would boost quieter material.

Putting in dynamic material (in the form of a sliced sine wave) results in a much higher output level, but still no significant sign of odd harmonics (as you would get from saturation or very fast compression). With program material, the closest I can get is using Kotelnikov's "delta" mode - i.e. the difference between compressed and uncompressed signals. But the frequency response is all wrong, and it adds a level-dependence Vitamin doesn't seem to have. As far as I can tell, it works like some kind of transient designer.

Has anyone else had a similar experiment and got further than me? This is an interesting and seemingly-popular plugin, but I can't really predict what it's going to do to my material which makes it hard to use. I don't really understand why professional reviewers (e.g. SoundOnSound https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/waves-vitamin) have been treating it as a compressor/exciter. Am I missing something?

[Chapelle]

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[incubus]

I liked it, but ended up selling it because I go through phases of gas/sell/gas/sell, you know, like almost everyone else.

[acYm]

sounds kinda like some sort of multi-band resonant all-pass filter?

[kbaccki]

gas/sell/gas/sell

Or gas/purge/gas/purge.

[stromkraft]

The marketing material and discussion around Vitamin strongly implies that it's an exciter, using compression and saturation to add harmonics and increase energy in a multiband parallel chain.

It isn't. Ignore the multiband aspect for a moment by setting a single wide frequency band. Feeding sine waves into this band does not add harmonics. Only by boosting the levels right into hard-clipping do I get a steady wave to "saturate".…

Putting in dynamic material (in the form of a sliced sine wave)

While I haven't tried this one yet, why are you expecting to learn from simple sine waves what happens? Maybe Vitamin isn't as dumb as you think and responds more dynamically to more complex textures, rather than simple sine waves. I'd suggest you try more complex material and deduct the original signal.

[simon.a.billington]

Part eq, part multiband compressor, part saturator, part multiband stereo widener.

I to put it on a send, turn down the direct and send anything into it I feel can do with a bit of lift. I’ve also run it into an SPL Vitalizer which can also work quite well.

[incubus]

gas/sell/gas/sell

Or gas/purge/gas/purge.

Yes, quite.

[incubus]

Like said, the product is cool. It's all perspective as to what you are doing. Some like eq, some want hybrid items like this that maybe take a little guess work out of it.

I still thing that the waves "aural exciter" is the most functional of all the waves innovations. And ren bass

[Kinh]

Shit, why you using waves plugins?

[incubus]

Now now, no reason to get nasty

[Mathematics]

The difference between exciter and saturator was discussed recently:
viewtopic.php?t=383884

[TIMT]

Part eq, part multiband compressor, part saturator, part multiband stereo widener.

I to put it on a send, turn down the direct and send anything into it I feel can do with a bit of lift. I’ve also run it into an SPL Vitalizer which can also work quite well.

Part none of the above

It sounds like it uses the same method that the Aphex Aural Exciter(there is also no saturation or transfer curve involved in the Aphex things either) uses but in a multiband arrangement.the way the Aural Exciter works is by synthesizing frequencies above (or below)the harmonics you have present in your sounds using a "heterodyne"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodyne.

Think of it like frequency shifting,but it's not frequency shifting.i might have my wires crossed though but it is either this or a Hilbert Transform which mixes in phase inverted copies of the same thing at 90 degrees offset.

It doesn't saturate at all though there are no transfer curves or chebyshev polynomials (like in Cobalt Saphira for example)in Vitamin

I personally don't use it because i find the crossovers to be a bit much (they ruin the sound IMO)would be nice if they at least had different options for the crossovers like FIR mode that isn't quite linear,and isn't quite minimal (like the hybrid mode in Izotope's stuff)

As for the dynamics section,i don't think or i am not sure that it's as sophisticated as a compressor. it has more in common with a transient designer in its behaviour,so it is likely just a very simple envelope follower of some sort

In case you was interested the SPL Vitalizer also works by doing something funky with phase shifting using the group delay maybe from Allpass filtering to shift overlapping frequencies into the time domain.it doesn't specify in the literature how it accomplishes that but there are not many ways you can accomplish that anyway so it is likely an Allpass filter or phase rotating circuit(which still would involve Allpass filters).no saturation in that one either.

[budweiser]

I don't know what it does but i have some projects where it does it very well, so i'll keep it for backward compatibility.

[imrae]

While I haven't tried this one yet, why are you expecting to learn from simple sine waves what happens? Maybe Vitamin isn't as dumb as you think and responds more dynamically to more complex textures, rather than simple sine waves. I'd suggest you try more complex material and deduct the original signal.

Because sine waves make it very easy to identify any traditional waveshaping/distortion that is happening. Which is a thing most people seem to believe this plugin does. Also, they have a steady peak and RMS value which makes it easier to look at the transfer function objectively.

Slicing the sine wave was an effective way of kicking in the "dynamic" behaviour of Vitamin; as I said it hugely increased the output level so clearly Vitamin "likes" this material and did something with it. What it did not do was clearly introduce a 3rd harmonic, which I would expect to see from any traditional saturator.

On complex program material it's difficult to distiguish between adding new frequencies and boosting existing ones.