Enhancers - do or dont?

Everyone has their own opinion on this one. Generally speaking enhancers add noise to your mix. They may brighten up the mix by adding clarity and punch but they are usually stuffing around with the stereo spread and balance of your mix. People usually get quite excited about one of these products upon purchase but gradually begin to use them less and less the more professional they become.

There are several companies making enhancers and exciters such as - SPL, BBE, Aphex, Behringer and Joe Meek. In the majority of applications these units are best utilised on individual parts of your mix - whether it’s a group of drums, acoustic sections or vocals. Running enhancers over your entire mix is dangerous unless you purposely want it to sound bright and loose - such as web or radio work for example.

SPL’s Transient Designer is an excellent tool for shaping an envelope over a groups of sounds. Running all your percussion through it or sampling beats through it are two very effective processes. Being able to add attack and release over your entire drum parts is cool. BBE’s 362 series are a cheap and effective unit. By arranging the order in which frequency ranges arrive at your ear BBE have patented a nice system which adds little noise but heaps of definition to the mix, quite useful for all styles of electronic dance.

The SPL Vitalizer is a popular unit which has been around for a while, by using filters it brings out certain frequencies in the mix, the MK2 version offers compression over just the bottom end of your mix - a deadly effect when used well.

Both Joe Meek and Focusrite make a couple of excellent enhancers devoted to individual parts of a mix, for vocals these units are hard to beat. The Aphex and Behringer units are quite nasty but can be used to good effect with caution. In this little market niche you get what you pay for.

These days there are many software based enhancers etc. Take extreme care with these and try and stick to the reputable brands like Waves and TC.

The thing to do is take some of your music on CD to a music store and ask the staff to run your music through some of the units we’ve mentioned. Used sparingly and over individual parts, enhancers can add definition, clarity and punch to the mix.

Thanks to Davide Carbone from www.bs1records.com for this article - See his great Sample collection at Loopmasters today.