Reference Manual

342 Live Audio Effect Reference
easily hear the results of your adjustments. Generally, de-essing works best with fairly fast attack
and release times.
Uncompression
Mastering engineers are often asked to perform miracles, like adding punch and energy to a
mix that has already been heavily compressed, and thus has almost no remaining transients.
Most of the time, these mixes have also been heavily maximized, meaning that they also have
no remaining headroom. Luckily, upward expansion can sometimes help add life back to such
overly squashed material. To do this:
1. Turn down the Input knob to provide some additional headroom.
2. Adjust the Above thresholds for the bands so that they’re below the highest peaks.
3. Add a small amount of upward expansion to each band. Be careful — excessive upward
expansion can make transients very loud.
4. Carefully adjust the attack and release times for each band. Note that, unlike in typical
downward compression, very fast attack times will increase the impact of transients, while
slower times result in a more muffled sound.
Note: Adding a maximizer or limiter to boost gain after you’ve returned some peaks to your
material may simply destroy them again.
22.23 Overdrive
The Overdrive Effect.