I've worked occasionally with Pro Tools in the past. I used an Izotope add-on called Ozone that had something they called "Harmonic Exciter", where you could divide the audio band into segments of your choosing by frequency, and apply different parameters to add some "excitement" and, for lack of a better term, "ass", to the music. What was nice about it was that it just wasn't a "better" equalizer; it used the musical peaks and frequencies that were occurring in real time and applied the exciter just to what was happening in the music to great effect when used judiciously, I thought.
Using something like this could bring some life to ridiculously overcompressed music, without all the overhead of having a musical "fingerprint" for every piece of music. While it would not "uncompress" the music, it would add dynamics, power, warmth, etc. It's truly something you have to hear to realize its effect, comparing music before and after the Harmonic Exciter is applied.
It's funny that the OP brings up "adding" more dynamic range to heavily compressed music at this time, as I was recently thinking the same thing and how that would be a great addition to JRiver Media Center!
From the .pdf on the Izotope website, their product literature on "Harmonic Exciter" as it appears in Ozone 5:
10: HARMONIC EXCITER
An exciter can add “energy” to an audio signal and, in the context of the mastering domain, to an entire mix. This doesn’t necessarily mean increasing the volume, or boosting the signal, however. A sense of “energy” can be created by adding additional combinations of odd or even harmonics to the frequency content of a mix, and that’s what a harmonic exciter is designed to do.
What’s the Goal of Harmonic Exciting when Mastering?
If one of your mastering goals is to add power, punch, and other subjective terms such as “warmth” and “brightness,” the Harmonic Exciter might be a good tool to use.
There are many design strategies behind exciters, from dynamic equalization, waveshaping and distortion to short multi-band delays. When people speak fondly of recording music to tape machines, or reminisce about the sonic characteristics of tube equipment, part of that enthusiasm is a result of the harmonic distortions that these and other types of analog equipment impart on audio, as further described below.
How could distortions (a sometimes-dirty word in audio) be so appealing? Well, in truth, distortion in small doses isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If designed correctly and applied with restraint, distortion can introduce harmonics that add excitement or sparkle to a mix.
As an example: Ozone provides a selection of exciters modeled on tubes, triodes and tape saturation. When tubes saturate, they exhibit a type of harmonic distortion that is generally described as “warm” or “musical.” If used with care, this distortion creates additional harmonics that add presence or sparkle to the mix while still preserving a natural characteristic. You can perhaps see why boosting high frequencies with an EQ is not going to achieve the same effect. Boosting an EQ simply turns up the existing harmonics, whereas a Harmonic Exciter can actually synthesize additional harmonics. Tape saturation provides a similar effect, although the harmonics that are created are more “odd” than “even.” That is, tube saturation typically generates even harmonics that are an octave apart (again, “musical”), while tape saturation is a slightly more aggressive excitation, generating odd harmonics that are a fifth apart.
Principles of Harmonic Excitation
It’s very easy to overdo an exciter. What may sound good at 3.0…might sound even a little better at 4.0…and once you get used to that, you find yourself pushing it up to 5.0 to keep the “excitement.” Before you get caught up in the excitement (pun intended, we guess) and send it off to the duplicator or to SoundCloud, do a little reality check:
1. Compare it to some commercial mixes. Okay, in some cases these are overdone as well, but it depends on the genre and sound you’re shooting for. What works for a dance mix probably isn’t going to sound as appropriate on an acoustic jazz number.
2. Live with the “excited” mix for a while. At first listen an exciter is, well, exciting, but over time it can really sound fatiguing or even harsh and annoying.
Using the Ozone Harmonic Exciter
This is a very easy effect to use. (That could also be why it’s often overused.)
As a multi-band effect, the Exciter has up to 4 bands to work with, and each has a pair of controls. In most cases, you’re going to use the Amount control. In addition, you’ll probably apply excitation to the upper one or two bands, although there are some cases where tube saturation in small amounts across the entire spectrum can be musically pleasing.
With your mix playing back (of course), adjust Band 3’s Amount slider upward. As you move the slider up, you’ll hear what starts as sparkle and excitement, but it can quickly turn against you as you go up too far. Take note of the point where it starts sounding “annoying” and then turn it back down to 0.0.
Note that higher bands can usually bear higher amounts of excitation.
Clicking on the ‘Oversampling’ button engages more processing power. This will greatly increase the accuracy and sound quality of the analog modeling in the harmonic exciter. If your computer is powerful enough, you may run this in real time. Otherwise, it’s good to engage this tool before rendering/bouncing.
As you work with these effects, you can use the checkbox labeled “B” to bypass any multi-band processing applied to that band by Ozone. As a counterpart to the Solo checkbox, the Bypass checkbox is a useful tool for hearing what sections of your mix are being processed through each band. Note that this Bypass applies to ALL multi-band processing, including multi-band harmonic excitation, stereo imaging, and dynamics.
You can right-click on the multi-band spectrum display to remove or insert bands. For additional guidance, there is also a right-click and “Learn” feature that will automatically analyze your audio signal and determine the most appropriate, transparent places to place your crossover points.
General Harmonic Exciter Tips
• In most cases, excitation to the upper bands will give the desired effect. However, since Ozone offers an analog tube saturation model for the harmonic excitation, you can achieve a type of “tube emulation” on the low-mid bands as well. For this scenario, you’ll want to try a very small amount of equal excitation across all bands. (In other words, keep the Amount control low and work in single band mode.)
• You can get a “dirty” bass effect by applying some excitation to the low band. If you’re simply going for more bass level, use an EQ or maybe the Dynamics module, but if you’re looking to add grunge on those bass harmonics, sometimes you can turn to the Harmonic Exciter. You can also check out iZotope’s Trash for extreme multi-band distortion fun (
www.izotope.com/trash).
• The Tape excitation mode provides a bright, saturated tone; the Tube model provides a thicker midrange rich tone; and the Retro model provides a heavy saturation character. The Warm exciter mode is similar to Tube, but is unique because it generates only even harmonics that decay quickly, and you can use Warm to drive tube style saturation quite hard, without creating “mud” in the low mid-range.
• Electronica mixes, or mixes that are comprised of more soft synths and samples than acoustic instruments, can sometimes sound a little lifeless. Use the Harmonic Exciter as described above to change this!
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Topic: A wild idea to combat dynamic range compression (Read 3168 times)