Drawmer Advanced Dynamics for Mackie D8B - Manual (Page 17)

17
User’s Guide
Expander
One of the problems in using compression is that maximum
system gain occurs during extremely quiet passages or during
pauses, resulting in an increase in background noise, the degree
of which depends on the amount of compression being used. The
accepted way of dealing with this problem is to include a
separate expander section in the compressor. This expander
section has its own threshold control so that a low-level gating
action may be applied to keep pauses clean. But the problem
with simple expanders is that, even when properly set up, they
may unwittingly process low-level sounds, as they have no
means of identifying them from noise. On a vocal track, for
example, this can lead to the starts or endings of words being
accidentally removed, especially if the singer has a wide
dynamic range. The ADX-100 Expander has separate attack and
release parameters to help negate this unwanted effect.
Active Button
The Active button enables the Expander. The Active button
(when off) routes the input signal to the output with no
processing.
Threshold
This control sets the level below which expansion starts to take
place and may be set in the range –63.5 dB to 0.0 dB.
Gain Reduction Meter
Ratio
Slider
Attack
Slider
Release
Slider
Range
Slider
Active
Button
(font is
white
when en-
abled)
Threshold Slider
& Meter Mode Toggle (Noise
Gate/Expander)