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Waves LinMB software guide page 23 of 28
or above the Threshold, the signal is increased in gain. Upward expansion
takes more time to adjust because you must try to find the subjectively equal
settings of what was done to the sound, and even if you know the “numbers”
on the original processor, the numbers really don’t relate from one processor
to the next very well.
• Load the Uncompressor preset.
• Notice that all Ranges are set to positive values so that the gains will
be increased when the signal goes around or above the Threshold.
• Adjust the Master Threshold for some reasonable expansion.
Now it is important to point out that the attack and release times are
absolutely critical to the way the expansion works. In most cases of over
compressed material, the peaks and punch have been mightily squashed
down, so a fast attack time will help restore these peaks. Longer release
times help bring the presence and sustain back into the material.
However, let’s go one step further and suppose that you have a mix that has
“hole-punching” or “pumping”. These are tricky, but can be restored to a
degree. In the case of hole-punching, this is when a compressor has
overshoot of the gain reduction, that is, it over-reacts to a peak signal and
applies too much gain reduction to the signal. Many times the peak itself was
never compressed, just the audio after the peak, so you would want to use a
slower attack time to avoid expanding the peak even higher, and carefully
adjust the release time to “fill in the hole”. It’s tricky enough to do this on a
wideband expander such as the C1, and even more so on a multiband.
Best thing to do in this case is to try to determine if you should use a
wideband expander (such as the C1 or Renaissance Compressor). Using a
multiband upward expander would be best for situations where specific
frequency ranges had been over compressed, such as a mix with too much
compression on the bass. Another example would be too much compression
on a drum submix and you need to restore the attack of the drums but not the
low frequencies, so you could use a mid- and high- frequency upward
expander and ignore the lower frequencies.
You can load the Uncompressor and simply Bypass any band you don’t need.
Here’s another tip: to bypass a band but still have it available as “EQ”, simply
set the Range control to zero and use the Gain control to set the EQ level in
that band.