What exactly is a exciter?

B

BriGreentea

New member
As a former musician/guitarist that got back into making music after a 10 year drought I was caught up a little on mastering processing using compression and limiting and having a decent understanding of that after some studying. Mastering in general does take a degree in music or an individual that started young making music or just someone that was interested in recording other people's music and just learned throughout the years.

I am asking what a exciter is because I got Adobe Audition, previously 10 years ago using Cool Edit Pro and one of the big things on this program I was interested in so much aside from the better compression programing (especially the multiband) was the "mastering" effect on it. So I read up on this function of Adobe and learned it has a "exciter" (whatever that meant to me at the time) and started getting really vague internet results aside from it is a process of clarity and sparkle or whatever on the mixdown....which makes me curious is it wrong to toggle with thing on some tracks?

Also curious how long has this been used in mastering and along compression. I did a image result and had no idea along with compressors these are used on racks on a manual effect....not just some synthetic computer program.

Guess that leads me to another question....does anyone still use real mastering racks or pedals for mastering or is everything done by computer programs that are just as good? Thanks.
 
BriGreentea said:
Guess that leads me to another question....does anyone still use real mastering racks or pedals for mastering or is everything done by computer programs that are just as good? Thanks.
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This is a massive can of worms. :)

I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's probably fair to say that most audio plugs have hardware roots.
Heck, a lot of plugins are emulations of specific hardware models.
Many people still use hardware compression, eq, etc.
It's a preference/money thing really.
 
BriGreentea said:
What exactly is a exciter?
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For lack of a better term, it's a distortion effect that's usually applied to a reasonably specific band of frequencies.
Guess that leads me to another question....does anyone still use real mastering racks or pedals for mastering or is everything done by computer programs that are just as good? Thanks.
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Well, no pedals, but you aren't going to get me to part with my analog gear any time soon...


Steenamaroo said:
This is a massive can of worms. :)
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I see what you did there... :thumbs up:
 
An exciter {or enhancer} is supposed to restore a little brightness to a mix or track{s} in a mix that have gotten a little, dull. I used to use a Boss one and it was pretty effective. I sold it on ebay last year. It was snapped up in a flash.
 
Manslick said:
Exciters tend to restore the sheen and shimmer that compression might sand off. Your mix may not need it.
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Do they make them for people?
My back is killing me.

Anyways, is an exciter much different from my BBE Sonic Expander?
 
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An exciter has roots in the old aphex aural exciter. it adds distortion in an attempt to recreate the upper harmonics of the program material that had been lost due to tape wear or generation loss on analog tape. It was used extensively on the first two Boston albums.

A bbe sonic maximizer shifts the phase of certain frequencies, cancelling some of the muddy ones out and emphasizing the upper midrange. This makes things sound brighter, which some people describe as more clear.

The only time I ever use one is when someone sends me tracks to mix and the bass was recorded with strings that haven't been changed in decades. Even then, I generally opt for a little distortion instead.

Here is the opinion part of the post: these thing had their uses in an analog studio, even then they had limited use and it was easy to go overboard. (again, the Boston albums) There should be no reason to use them in a digital system, unless you are trying to fix something that never should have been recorded like that in the first place.

The OP also mentioned multi-band compressors, these are great for radio station transmitters and fixing something that never should have been recorded like that but, for the most part should not be necessary when masking a competently mixed recording.
 
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