Waves Audio Linear Phase Multiband Compressor User Guide

Waves – Linear-Phase MultiBand

Software Audio Processor

Users Guid e

version 2 Dec. 27

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Chapter 1 – Introduction

Introducing Waves Linear-Phase MultiBand Processor. The LinMB is an evolved version of the C4 MultiBand Parametric Processor. If you are familiar with C4 you will fin d the Linear Phase MultiBand very similar, adding some true breakthrough innovation and technology that yields superior and purer results. The LinMB has -

• 5 discrete bands each with its own gain and dynamics for equalizing, compressing, expanding or limiting each band separately.

• Linear Phase crossovers allow true transparency when the split is active but idle. The only effect is pure delay with no coloration of any sort.

• LinMB is equipped with the options for Automatic Makeup and gain Trim.

• Adaptive threshold behavior achieves most effective and transparent

multiband dynamics processing.

• LinMB has the visual interface of the award winning C4 with Waves’ unique DynamicLine™ display showing the actual gain change as an EQ graph display.

Waves created the LinMB to answer to the most demanding and critical requirements when Mastering any sound and genre of music.

While the Waves Masters bundle is focused to provide purist quality tools for Mastering, there are many applications in which it may be very useful i.e. Vocal processing, Transmission processing, Noise reduction, Track Strip. The LinMB has a fixed amount of delay or fixed latency of about 70ms (3072 samples in 44.1-48kHz). Due to the intensive calculations required for the Linear Phase crossover it is quite an achievement to have this work in realtime in both TDM and Native. Much effort was put to optimize the performance for specific CPU’s using Co processors such as Altivec on MAC and SIMD on x86 type processors. Processing higher sample rate such as 96kHz will definitely require m uch more CPU then 48kHz.

ULTIBAND DYNAMICS

In MultiBand Dynamics processing we split the wide-band signal to discrete bands. Each band is sent to its dedicated dynamics processor to apply the desired dynamic gain adjustment or static gain. Splitting the signal has several major consequences as follows:

• Eliminates Inter Modulations between bands.

• Eliminates gain riding between different frequency bands.

• Allows setting each band’s attack, release times scaled to the frequencies

in that band.

• Allows setting different functionality (compression, Expansion, EQ) per each band.

For example, its possible to compress the low frequencies with longer attack release values, at the same time expand the mid range with shorter ones, DeEss hi-mids with much faster attack and release and boost the super hi frequencies without any dynamics.

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MultiBand devices are especially handy when dealing with the dynamics of a full range mix. In a symphonic orchestra as well as in a Rock n Roll band different instruments dominate different frequency ranges. Many times the low range dominates the whole dynamic response while the higher frequencies are riding on top. While it is the mixer’s or composer’s job to reach a desired balance, mastering engineers often find they need to do something about the dynamics of the mixed source. It may be to complement it further or indeed improve its quality, or possibly just make it as loud as possible for competitive level, with as little degradation as possible.

INEAR PHASE XOVERS

When the Li nMB is active but is idle, it presents only a fixed amount of delay. The output is 24bit clean and true to the source. When we use Xovers to split a si gnal we like to think that they are splitting the input signal to bands leaving everything else untouched. The truth is that any normal analog or digital Xover introduces different amount of phase shift or delay to different frequencies. Further dynamic gain changes will cause further modulation of the Phase shift introduced by the Xovers. This phenomenon was treated in C4’s phase compensated Xovers but the initial phase shift caused by the Xovers is still apparent in C4 and in its output all frequencies are equal to the source in Amplitude but not in Phase. When its important to achieve as much source integrit y as possibl e the LinMB goes a long way and splits the signal to 5 bands maintaining a 24bit clean starting point for applying different dynamics processing to each of the bands.

Transients are the main sonic events that bene fit fr om Linear Phase. Transients contain a wide range of frequencies, and are highly “Localized” in time. A non-linear phase filter that shifts the phase differently for different frequencies will “smear” the transient over a longer p eriod of time. The Linear Phase EQ will pass transients maintaining the ir full sharpness.

DAPTIVE THRESHOLDS AND DE-MASKING

When a sof t sound and a loud sound happen at the same time, the loud sound has some Masking effect over the softer sound. The research of Masking, articulated the Upward spread Masking, where loud low frequency sounds mask higher frequency sounds. The Linear MultiBand provides a way for each band to be sensitive to the energy in its “Masker” band. When the energy in the Masker band is high the band’s threshold will rise to introduce less attenuation and compensate for the masking, letting the sound in each band come out as loud and as clear as possible. The Linear MultiBand is the first processor to introduce this de-masking behavior, of which you can read more in Chapter 3 of this guide.

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Chapter 2 – Basic Operation.

HE WAVES LINEAR PHASE MULTIBAND’S CONTROL GROUPS

HE CROSSOVER FREQUENCIES

The 4 Xover frequencies are set directly under the graph by grabbing their graph marker or using the text button. These define the cutoff frequencies in which the WideBand signal will be split into the 5 discrete bands.

NDIVIDUAL BAND CONTROLS

Each band of Waves LINMB has 5 adjustable dynamics settings. Threshold, Gain, Range, Attack, Release, Solo and Bypass. These function similarly in most dynamics processors but in this processor they affect the dynamics of one of the 5 bands. The Range may seem unfamiliar and basically it is in place of the well-known Ratio, but it defines both the intensity of gain adjustment and the limit of gain adjustment. Read more In the next chapter.

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LOBAL SETTINGS CONTROLS

In the Global section you can find master controls, which are ganged controls for moving all the per band controls at once.

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Other deal with the overall processor output – Gain, Trim and Dither. The Makeup control allows selection between manual mode and Auto Makeup. Finally there are 4 general compression behavior controls – Adaptive (Explained further in the next chapter), Release – Select between Waves ARC – Auto Release Control to a manually set release. Behavior – Opto or Electro modes affect the nature of the release. Knee - soft or hard knee or any value in between.

UICKSTART

To start off, Waves provide a selection of factory presets. These can mostly serve as good starting points for applying MultiBand Dynamics. As this is not an effects processor the actual settings have to be program dependant and most mastering engineers would prefer to manually set the processor and not rely on ready made settings. The processor defaults and presets offer nice scaling of the Time Constants Attack, Release in relation to their Band’s Wavelength providing slower settings to lower bands and faster values to higher. Other controls are set in the presets to provide some showcase of possible modes and different combinations.

• Start off using the Processor defaults.

• Play Music through.

• For general MultiBand Compression first set the Range in all bands to –

6dB by dragging the Master Range control downwards. Th is will assure that the gain adjustment will be Attenuation or Compression and the maximal attenuation will not exceed a 6dB reduction.

• Now set your nominal per band thresholds. Use the peak energy in each band to set the nominal threshold to the peak value.

• Now you can drag down the master Threshold to set the general compression. You can choose to engage Auto Makeup after setting the nominal thresholds and this way further threshold manipulation will preserve relative loudness and you will hear the compression rather the change in loudness.

• Adjust the per band gains to satisfy or qualify with your idea of “flat” Equalization.

• Play the whole program, or at least the loudest passages and hit the Trim button to makeup the global output gain buy the its Margin to the full scale.

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Note that this Quick Start routine is not the Golden recipe to mastering with the Linear MultiBand, it does however provide a general type practice that should let users new to MultiBand follow a recommended workflow. This example only scratches the surface of possibilities with the Linear MultiBand and there are more optional advanced features that may have implications on the workflow method. Read on in this guide to learn about some of the special advanced features.

Generally it’s important to remember that while the process is applied to split discrete frequency bands, it affects the Whole WideBand sound. Soloing each band and applying its compression in solo and then listening to the whole may prove unrewarding as a workflow.

Frequency Analyzers can be used to get visual feedback to validate or articulate what you hear but its most important to use the ears and work in a good listening environment for critical reference.

Practice Makes Perfect! This tool presents a lot of choice. Its not the Renaissance tools that help you save time for great results. It’s a highly flexible, ultra professional, purist quality tool.

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Chapter 3 – Specialties of the Chef

DAPTIVE THRESHOLDS AND DE-MASKING

The effect of louder sounds on softer sounds has been researched for decades. There are many classifications to masking and the most effective masking is considered forward in time and upward in frequency. Simply put loud lower frequencies affect the way we perceive higher softer frequencies. The loud low frequency mask the higher frequencies. In the LinMB we can consider each band to be the masker for the band above it, so when the sound in a certain band is very loud it will have some masking effect to the sound in the band above it. To address this we can introduce a little lift to the threshold of the masked band and as result it will get less attenuation and be a little louder or de-masked.

The Linear Phase MultiBand processor lets each band be sensitive to the energy in the band below it. The “Adaptive” control is a continuous scale of sensitivity to the Masker scaled in dB’s. –inf. Adaptive = off, this means no sensitivity and the threshold is absolute regardless of what’s happening in the lower band. When increasing the value the band will become more and more sensitive to the energy in the band below it, The energy ranges from –80dB tp +12. We call 0.0dB Fully Adaptive and values above it are Hyper Adaptive. When the energy in the Masker band is high the threshold will be lifted. When the energy in the lower band falls, the detail is revealed, threshold goes back down and the attenuation goes back to normal. Also there is a chain reaction that makes for subtle general looseness of compr ession to the hi g her bands whenever the low bands are with high energy.

Each band of the linear MultiBand has its own compression settings and the engineer may want to compress more when a band is exposed and less when its masked. In example a song starts with a solo vocal and then the Playback comes in and the picture changes. The “presence” frequencies of the voice become more significant then the lower “Warm” tones of the voice, so to regain warmth we would want to attenuate it less when the playback kicks in. This is a macro example that can easily be treated with a bit of automation but in concept masking happens on the micro scale throughout the program. For example a staccato bass line masks and exposes the higher band’s sound on a scale where manual riding isn’t practical. The adaptive behavior is the practical answer.

The Adaptive De-Masking behavior is new to almost all users, and some may think it’s unnecessary. It is however interesting, effective and worth a try. Others may find it useful but it may also call for some practice before you get comfortable with it. Optionally, it may change they way you work. As a first step, try to add adaptive behavior to ready made settings on material that you know very well. Set the Adaptive control to –0dB at this setting you will get very adaptive behavior. Do a bit of an A > B listening test. Try to pay special attention to passages that have different spectral dynamic nature and

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hear how the adaptive behavior responds to them adding a more dynamic approach to dynamics. This example is somewhat extreme and it is recommended to try settings around –12 dB for subtle adaptive de-masking. It may also be interesting to lower the overall threshold of the top 4 “Adaptive” bands by Multi-selecting their thre sholds and pulling them down to compensate for the added looseness, In any case when they are exposed they will be tighter and Looser when masked.

UTO MAKEUP

When Applying compression adjusting the threshold reduces loudness. Indeed in most compressors we can hear the overall gain reduction and we can apply makeup gain to regain the lost loudness. In WideBand compressors we find auto makeup to be fairly straightforward. The auto makeup will boost by the reverse value of the Threshold, or sometimes have a threshold dependant makeup “range” that accounts for the knee and ratio too. In MultiBand there are other considerations. The bands energy is going to be summed with that of the other bands so it’s hard to predict the part of the discrete band’s energy on the summed WideBand signal.

The Auto Makeup in LinMB is somewhat similar in that it accounts for the Threshold, Range and Knee. In wide band we would use the headroom to boost the loudness further then was possible before compressing. In the MultiBand case It is designed to help maintain general level stability for better a/b comparing. While in a wideband compressor the overall level will be reduced in the LinMB only the gain of a certain band will be reduced in relation to the others. It is much easier to hear the lost loudness then the actual compression so working with Auto Makeup the bands level remains similar and you can focus better on the sound of the dynamics process for that band. You can choose to use Auto Makeup as a work mode to help get the per band compression to sound right, Then apply per band gain on top of it. When disengaging Auto Makeup its effect will be updated into the per band gains. It is recommended to first set nominal thresholds per band to the peak energy in each band. Then engage auto makeup and continue to adjust the desired dynamics.

Auto Makeup does not interfere with the per-band Gain control. Also it cannot be clipping proofed and the overall Output gain will serve to trim the margin between the peak and the full scale.

AVES

ARC - A

UTO RELEASE CONTROL

Waves ARC was designed and debuted in the Waves Renaissance Compressor. This routine sets the optimal gain adjustment release time by being program sensitive. The Auto Release Control still refers to its band’s release time and optimizes it according to the actual attenuation assuring maximal transparency. Before ARC there was always a need to trade between grainy Distortion with short release times to Pumping when setting longer release times. ARC helps lower the extent of these artifacts. For best

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results, you may set your release time for the best compromise between Distorting and Pumping and then apply ARC to get even better results with less artifacts. Alternatively you can just count on this technology, set your release value to the desired ballpark or stick with the release scaling from a preset and rely on ARC to get it right. ARC was so well accepted wherever we introduced it and in the LinMB it is ON by default.

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