bbe 882i sonic maximizer is pretty good. i send all my gear/sound through this thing.

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well...what I think is that the exciters/enhancers are just harmonic distortion processors.

What they do is put a kind of harmonic distortion on the input. The problem might be if you are not careful with it, you might damage speakers...

it's possible to prevent this though, if you use a compressor in your signal chain (at the end)...

just my 2 cents, not really sure if I am right in all points...

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m-audio torq > ozone would be a practical example. helps by compressing , exciting, and eqing the master. whatever sounds good is a good rule of thumb.

If your studio monitors are worth much you don't need anything of such.

If the source audio sucks, it just sucks. You can't make a bad source "good"...

If you are concerned more with the consistency and fullness of the recorded mix, consider a software-based plugin to equalize and optimize the mix after recording. I find Waves C4 or L3 work very well for this, and Wave Arts Powersuite is another excellent option. All will allow you to do parametric equalization and compression, which is the bulk of what you need to brighten up a mix. Plug these into Wavelab or Audition and you can do some nice tweaking.

Honestly, you are best of doing the mix with no processing, make it sound as good as you can in it's "raw" state then worry about tweaking it after you've laid down the tracks. Enhancing the kicks, bringing out the highs, moving synths into the foreground, is all very easily done with software.

If your studio monitors are lacking, consider an equalizer to fine tune them. Rane makes some very nice rackmount EQs. A compressor in the signal chain to the speakers is often a nice touch, if it's not set up too aggressively. Behringer makes a couple of fairly decent compressors. Behringer gear isn't all that bad, but not top rate or anything. For the price, it's not so bad. Just avoid their mixers and anything else that you'll physically interact with often, as your more likely to run into problems with physical wear on inexpensive faders, knobs, etc etc.

The plus of a compressor is that it doesn't add harmonic distortion or perform equalization, a decent compressor simply adjust levels and prevents going over a threshold so you can keep your amp's gain higher than without it... prevents transients...

quote:

Originally posted by i got big pants my buddies have told me behringer actually makes good rack gear. how true this statement is...i have no clue

This is indeed true. It's not top of the range by any means, but it's not just cheap rip-off versions of other brands like their DJ gear is... It's relatively inexpensive and good for the price, in my experience of their compressors and fx units anyway.

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Stu Cox |

quote:

Originally posted by Stu Cox This is indeed true. It's not top of the range by any means, but it's not just cheap rip-off versions of other brands like their DJ gear is... It's relatively inexpensive and good for the price, in my experience of their compressors and fx units anyway.

well...not so sure about that! hardware tends to sound much better than software (especially when talking about compressors and dedicated fx dsp's) so naturally behringer would come up as better quality than their dj stuff- its apples and oranges. in my experience though, studio gear is also "you get what you pay for" like with dj-gear.

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Seen talk before about their rack gear being useful for live gigs (band oriented) as if it goes kaput, not lost much and is easily replacable. Wouldn't buy it myself unless doing gigs on the road