Which comes first Exciter or Compressor?

[passenger57]

Hi there. Quick question regarding Vienna Suite. I'm trying out the demo and am very excited to be purchasing. I put the Exciter and Compressor on my mix and my mixes never sounded so smooth. My question is, which should come first on the master bus when mastering, the Exciter or Compressor? I figure the Compressor should be the last one in the chain right? I'm also curious how the other Vienna Suite users have their settings for film music. Thanks!

[Dietz]

Like always, there are no hard rules in audio engineering, because it depends a lot on the context what can be considered "good and proper" sounding (... even if some people believe in the opposite, but that's a different story for a different forum ;-) ...)

As a rule of thumb, most mixing engineers tend to do most restauration processing (e.g. a low-cut) _before_ a compressor, and most "sweetening" afterwards. In your case this would mean that the exciter wold have to sit after the compressor (which makes much sense as compression tends to "duck away" the high-freqency range of a signal).

That said I would stay away from an Exciter in the mains stereo bus, as your inquiry seems to imply. An Exciter is much better plugged into a single track or a subgroup (eg. "All Strings" or "Piatti") instead of the master bus, because that way you will be able to fine-tune the Exciter's settings according to an intrument's need (... and there might be quite a few which _don't_ need additional "exciting" at all).

HTH,

[passenger57]

Thank you for the detailed response. That certainly makes sense. Very helpful!

[Dietz]

You're welcome!