One of our tasks as sound engineers is making the right mixing choices according to the material we are dealing with. Experience and habit tend to make us rely mostly on what we know works for a specific task, creating a risk of losing creativity.

This article is about how to use tools that are normally used in specific context in unexpected settings, or in other words how to creatively ‘re-purpose’ them to serve our needs.   

What Are Harmonic Processors?

Harmonic processors are tools that manipulate the harmonic content of a signal by means of different techniques, ranging from dynamic equalisation and phase manipulation to harmonic synthesis and subtle distortion. The most used processors in this category are exciters and saturators, the former being usually aimed at high frequency content and the latter being characterised by broadband behaviour.

We are used to applying these processors to specific genres and instruments, such as guitars, keyboards and drums in pop/rock music, to add the sparkle and colour that we might not have captured while recording. 

Sometimes, however, we face situations where our standard choices don’t allow us to reach what we have in our minds. For example, we feel the need of more top end in a track, but a simple boost of high frequencies creates a harsh sound that ruins the mix. Here is the case where we can try something different.

Using Exciters And Saturation To Enhance Orchestral Music

Mixing an orchestra usually requires care in preserving the sound of the “real thing”. This is particularly true for classical music, where the timbre of the instruments is paramount to preserve the feelings that the musicians are trying to convey to the listeners. In these situations, we need to keep the signal path as clean as possible.

There are cases, however, in which we need something more. If we think of film soundtracks, our minds immediately go to the “super-hyped-larger-than-life” sound of blockbuster Hollywood movies. If we are not so lucky as to be working in such a context (which implies working in a top recording studio with a real orchestra and top-end gear), we might nevertheless face the challenge to reproduce that specific sound using sample libraries as best as we can. In this case, we can try to use harmonic processors to obtain that sparkle and weight that a simple equaliser cannot reach, as it cannot introduce new character to the timbres we are dealing with. 

On one hand, an exciter can help us get a trumpet to pierce through a cluttered mix without making it harsh or without amplifying mechanical noises, or we can obtain more vibrant strings with lots of “rosin”. On the other hand, a clever use of saturation can yield more weight in the low range without making it sound muddy. 

Be Careful, Be Careful And… Be Careful!

As a rule of thumb, we need to be careful when using these processors, as it’s easy to go too far. A simple way to improve the colour of the tracks we are mixing is to use parallel processing, either inside a plugin (if it features a “mix” control) or using a parallel bus, increasing the volume or the balance of the processed sound until we reach the desired result without altering the source too much. 

Keep in mind that in mixing acoustic instruments “less is more”, as our goal can be usually reached with small, subtle actions that summed together create the big and lush sound we are always looking for.