Spectral Gate/Expander with no artifacts
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Guillaume Piolat Guillaume Piolat https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=366815 - KVRist
- 308 posts since 21 Sep, 2015 from Grenoble
Lens is an multiband expander without crossovers. https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Lens.html
Pay once in phase distortion, then you get compression / expansion and pre/post EQ "for free" within the transform space. Importantly this transform is NOT a FFT so the high-end isn't mushed like so many deresonators.
It's very nice to give a final polish of the noise "floor" of a mix, or cleaning up information in a mix.
However the bands will end up somewhat linked most of the time, since it easily creates "water drops" artifacts with this number of bands, and that would be even worse with a FFT.
For this reason, for the purpose of cleaning up recordings, less bands would be perhaps more appropriate if you're not after floor cleaning or water drops effect.
Also the reason there is no special sidechain EQ for the expander part because, if the bands are mostly linked, a sidechain EQ is very similar to an output EQ in the end.
Before we made Lens, an interview from Beatskillz noted multiband expansion wasn't a profitable niche in audio plugins, and they rather do something else to survive.
I can confirm this is not a very profitable niche to be, and that's why there isn't too much of them.
Pay once in phase distortion, then you get compression / expansion and pre/post EQ "for free" within the transform space. Importantly this transform is NOT a FFT so the high-end isn't mushed like so many deresonators.
It's very nice to give a final polish of the noise "floor" of a mix, or cleaning up information in a mix.
However the bands will end up somewhat linked most of the time, since it easily creates "water drops" artifacts with this number of bands, and that would be even worse with a FFT.
For this reason, for the purpose of cleaning up recordings, less bands would be perhaps more appropriate if you're not after floor cleaning or water drops effect.
Also the reason there is no special sidechain EQ for the expander part because, if the bands are mostly linked, a sidechain EQ is very similar to an output EQ in the end.
Before we made Lens, an interview from Beatskillz noted multiband expansion wasn't a profitable niche in audio plugins, and they rather do something else to survive.
I can confirm this is not a very profitable niche to be, and that's why there isn't too much of them.
Checkout our plug-ins here.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 266 posts since 11 Sep, 2005
I think Lens could be improved.
And I suspect that for clean spectral operation, it will need 4x the actual number of bands, and good separation between them.
And I suspect that for clean spectral operation, it will need 4x the actual number of bands, and good separation between them.
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Guillaume Piolat Guillaume Piolat https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=366815
- KVRist
- 308 posts since 21 Sep, 2015 from Grenoble
For the purpose of having a:
More bands and more separation means longer more resonant bands.
If anything, I'd say a Voxengo-style plugin like PeakBusters or TEOTE would be more adequately positionned to have that thanks to their band number from 3 to 40.
On the "more bands" side, have you tried DSM v3? It reportedly does expansion, curious if it fits your boat since FFT-based. Or perhaps Limitless, I don't know. To me that purpose would require smooth crossovers. (EDIT: or StereoTool!)
I'm not sure why you would want more bands to be honest. It is possible I don't get it.clean, smooth signature to the mix.
More bands and more separation means longer more resonant bands.
If anything, I'd say a Voxengo-style plugin like PeakBusters or TEOTE would be more adequately positionned to have that thanks to their band number from 3 to 40.
On the "more bands" side, have you tried DSM v3? It reportedly does expansion, curious if it fits your boat since FFT-based. Or perhaps Limitless, I don't know. To me that purpose would require smooth crossovers. (EDIT: or StereoTool!)
Checkout our plug-ins here.
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Andreya_Autumn Andreya_Autumn https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=553235
- KVRian
- 510 posts since 21 Feb, 2022
Ah, so the thing you're looking for is a DBX compander kinda thing? The word "spectral" is a bit misleading in that case. Spectral nowadays usually refers to stuff like Lens. Tons of individual frequency bands. The DBX companders are all 3-band affairs as far as I know. Bass, Mid, Treble. Satin by U-He while primarily a tape emulator also emulates various companders (you can bypass the tape emulation to use the compander section alone). Dan Worral has a nice demo on his youtube. Search for "Dan Worral wtf is a compander". I don't know if the exact DBX thing you want is among the models included but type I and II are in there.