How to use a Dynamic Expander

[bracurrie]

I have an evaluation of fabfilter's Pro-G plugin. http://www.fabfilter.com/help/pro-g/ It's cabable of so much more than what I want it to do and because of that I am having trouble climbing the curve on just how to use it for simple expansion. I know I have heard several members have and use expansion.

Please share settings that you use and if anyone has any advice at all I would appreciate the pointers.

I am ignoring Expert mode and I get the Threshold and Ratio settings. I believe the range limits the upper end of expansion. Beyond that I am learning.

Thanks.

[mustang guy]

I have an evaluation of fabfilter's Pro-G plugin. http://www.fabfilter.com/help/pro-g/ It's cabable of so much more than what I want it to do and because of that I am having trouble climbing the curve on just how to use it for simple expansion. I know I have heard several members have and use expansion.

Please share settings that you use and if anyone has any advice at all I would appreciate the pointers.

I am ignoring Expert mode and I get the Threshold and Ratio settings. I believe the range limits the upper end of expansion. Beyond that I am learning.

Thanks.

I found a pretty good demo for that program on YT.

That is a pretty cool program. Are you setting up a recording studio? This isn't a cheap plugin...

[bracurrie]

I have an evaluation of fabfilter's Pro-G plugin. http://www.fabfilter.com/help/pro-g/ It's cabable of so much more than what I want it to do and because of that I am having trouble climbing the curve on just how to use it for simple expansion. I know I have heard several members have and use expansion.

Please share settings that you use and if anyone has any advice at all I would appreciate the pointers.

I am ignoring Expert mode and I get the Threshold and Ratio settings. I believe the range limits the upper end of expansion. Beyond that I am learning.

Thanks.

I found a pretty good demo for that program on YT.

That is a pretty cool program. Are you setting up a recording studio? This isn't a cheap plugin...

No I am not setting up a recording studio. My son creates electronic music and uses plug ins with Ableton Live and so I learned about this tech. Expensive yes but less than a DBX hardware expander and with so much more flexibility. The money I have saved not being suckered into the typical "audiophile" gear gives me the budget to go for this.

I already saw the video, but it covers a lot of ground I will not be using. I was hoping some would have some experience with settings and why they used them so I could have a base to build on.

Thanks

[babadono]

bracurrie,

If I'm understanding the info at the manufacturers website this is a downward expander or an upward expander but not both. Can you use two in series? One to downward expand the signal below the threshold and then a second to upward expand signals above the threshold. Now that I am thinking about this maybe they would have to be in parallel not series and then you would have to sum the results back together (4 needed for stereo). Would be fun to experiment with. This is the way the old dbx technology (1bx, 3bx etc..) worked albeit in the analog domain. To retrieve dynamics that have been squashed you have to make the quiet parts quieter and the loud parts louder.

babadono

[bracurrie]

this is a downward expander or an upward expander but not both

Good question. They will reply to an inquiry. Seems to me that having expansion above the threshhold would be sufficent to have an impact, but there are some here that would know for sure.

Thanks

[mustang guy]

I have an evaluation of fabfilter's Pro-G plugin. http://www.fabfilter.com/help/pro-g/ It's cabable of so much more than what I want it to do and because of that I am having trouble climbing the curve on just how to use it for simple expansion. I know I have heard several members have and use expansion.

Please share settings that you use and if anyone has any advice at all I would appreciate the pointers.

I am ignoring Expert mode and I get the Threshold and Ratio settings. I believe the range limits the upper end of expansion. Beyond that I am learning.

Thanks.

I found a pretty good demo for that program on YT.

That is a pretty cool program. Are you setting up a recording studio? This isn't a cheap plugin...

No I am not setting up a recording studio. My son creates electronic music and uses plug ins with Ableton Live and so I learned about this tech. Expensive yes but less than a DBX hardware expander and with so much more flexibility. The money I have saved not being suckered into the typical "audiophile" gear gives me the budget to go for this.

I already saw the video, but it covers a lot of ground I will not be using. I was hoping some would have some experience with settings and why they used them so I could have a base to build on.

Thanks

No problem! Good luck!

[Chris A]

Seems to me that having expansion above the threshhold would be sufficent to have an impact, but there are some here that would know for sure.

Brad,

It seems to me that this is dependent on the type of music that you are dealing with. If you are using older analog recordings that need a "squelch" on tape hiss and ambient noise, etc. then both types of expansion are probably needed.

However, if you are dealing with compressed-dynamics digitally-recorded, digitally mixed, and digitally mastered CDs, plus other digital audio media that has been subjected to "squashing", then you probably can get away with not needing downward expansion in order to partially resurrect the transient peaks.

Think about how the mastering process squashed the mix in the first place--and what you are trying to "uncompress" digitally--to see my point.

Chris

[babadono]

Hmmmm.... If the quieter parts have been boosted so they can be recorded and played louder they must be downward expanded and played softer upon playback, No? Or I'm I missing something? And the louder parts that have been compressed to fit onto the given recording medium must be expanded upwards. Now if the louder parts were just allowed to overmodulate or 'clip' the recording medium all bets are off.

babadono

[Chris A]

Hmmmm.... If the quieter parts have been boosted so they can be recorded and played louder they must be downward expanded and played softer upon playback, No? Or I'm I missing something?

Depends on implementation.

If I were to guess, the upward-expanding plugins probably temporarily increase the number of bits per word on the big ends, then expand the fast-rising transients (via user-controlled settings) into these new "headroom bits", then numerically truncate the words back to their original size by subtracting bits off the small end of the words across the entire track to get back to 16 bits (or whatever the original word length was). My guess only. For highly compressed music - you would never hear any quantization effects since the tracks have been squashed and boosted to "maximize loudness".

In this scenario, there's no need to downward expand to suppress the low amplitude parts, because they are already being reduced by word small-end truncation.

Alternatively, you could also subtract a certain (user-selectable) numeric value off each word in order to create more headroom on the big end of the words for downstream expansion: the effect is the same as above.

Chris

[Chris A]

Any progress, Brad? I would think that any improvement in reverse engineering dynamics compression of rank-and-file Loudness War tracks would potentailly have a very large audience here.

Chris

[Chris A]

Status update: 

 

There is a plugin (component) for (the freeware player) foobar2000 that allows VST plugins to be used within foobar2000--VST 2.4 adapter

 

Once you drop that component into the components folder of foobar2000, then startup again, you can pull in VST plugin upward expanders like Transient Monster (downloadable directly for free trial with no timebombs) to regain your lost percussion/drum transients within your compressed tracks.  This particular expander works pretty darn well in my cursory trials - with no audible artifact byproducts, and it has dialable drum/percussion/transient expansion.

 

Highly recommended for your dynamically compressed tracks.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Chris A

[Chris A]

DP

Edited October 12, 2014 by Chris A