Convolution Exiter?

[Kingston]

To clear some confusion,

there are several completely different types of processes that are lumped under exciter/enhancer:

Aphex Exciter and SPL vitaliser are basically hipass filters with distortion (several implementations). This signal is then added to the original to "excite". This can't be replicated using convolution and the exciter plugins to date have sounded inferior to even the cheap behringer ones due to the difficulty of making good sounding CPU efficient distortion.

BBE process delays portions of signal thru a network off allpass filters and crossovers thus "enhancing" the signal. Warning: it sounds like crap on most material. But it can be copied to an impulse and thus be used in a convolution plugin.



The "hipass signal to a compressor" thing is generally known as the motown exciter. Basically they compressed the hell out of a signal that was hipassed (back in the day at around 8khz) and added that to the original uncompressed signal. Sounds very radio friendly, and Voxengo Voxformer makes this extremely easy. But do try other compressors and EQs with this technique for a different sound.

[Rangtangtang]

Anyone explain what Crysonic's SpectraLive is about. It sounds good on the final mix, but you have do it on every track if you want them to match.

[Kingston]

Anyone explain what Crysonic's SpectraLive is about. It sounds good on the final mix, but you have do it on every track if you want them to match.

It's basically similar process to BBE. It's a kind of network of allpass filters and crossovers. With BBE you'll get those same kind of matching problems when parallel processing the same signal.

Another example of this phase-related enhancement is the subtle thing Voxengo marquis does even when set to dry. Similarly it might become a problem with heavy parallel bus processing.

[omo]

And not distortion either. Aphex for example uses a kind of distortion to "excite" the sound.

Let's see, I think I read an intervue with a technican that was involved when Motown was the top of the pops. He described the exiter making, before
Aphex was around, as taking the high frequency material and compress the guts out of it. Then add it with a very subtile touch to the original sound source.

Mixers often "exite" this way. For example so-called NY Compression technique on drums and sometimes together with bass line.

[Kingston]

Just to add to my previous post, by far the best explanation of the BBE process is here:

http://www.refinedaudiometrics.com/products-clas.shtml

the pictures at the bottom of the page are pretty much thorough. You can also see why it creates phase problems with parallel processing.