upward expanders

[ramzijr]

hey . any ideas on these ? at the mastering stage

i need to finish an album im working on and ill have to master it myself , so im trying out some stuff ( no outboard btw ) . i dont want to compress alot , so the up-exp seem to be working nicely , but im a little worried about some minor balance issues . anyone have any general exp. with up-exp ? . using mcdsp plugins btw . ml 4000 .

[1945MF]

MC Dsp ML 4000 its good.. just carefully to tweak them. its very powerfull for software..

[ramzijr]

very powerful indeed . cant beat an analogue limiter tho

[Adda Audio]

Slightly off topic and a couple of years late, but I was going through some Ozone 4 presets and came across upward expansion which seemed to really have some desirable results - this was on a hip hop tune, really seemed to open it up... am I wrong? What are the pitfalls of upward expansion in mastering?

[bmanic]

Like with any dynamics processor you'll need to set the correct times for the music in question or you can really destroy the "flow" or "glue" of a track.

I use the Flux De-Expander sometimes to make things sound a bit more open and natural.. before I smash it all to bits with the limiter.

Cheers!
bManic

[Adda Audio]

Yup good advice it does make things seem a little unnaturally natural in this case. Almost desirable but kinda loses the transient focus. Pr'haps I should stay away from this until I know more...

[Cellotron]

On rare occasions I like the Stillwell Audio Transient Monster as it's incredibly simple to use, incredibly affordable, and can work nicely in some cases to bring back some punch and snap to tracks that were over compressed. It's similar to SPL Transient Designer but better bang for buck imho. Definitely not a "go to" tool by any means but nice to have in the tool box and a lot easier to dial in than a lot of other upper expanders.

Transient Monster | Stillwell Audio - It's About The Sound

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[SSMastering]

The ML4000 is a great tool.
I use it for de-essing and bringing out the kick drum in a lot of cases.

When you're using the upward expander and want to avoid losing transient focus,
you can try shortening the attack setting like you would on a compressor.

That way, it will let the initial transient through before the expander starts acting on the signal.


Ozone 4 does have multi-band upward expanding capabilities,
I tried using it just on the high frequency band of a song,
and it really opened it up and brought out the reverb tail.
It also gives you a mid-side processing option for each band, which you can also mess around with.