Which parameter in the Axe 2 will correspond to the effect of an exciter pedal?

enhancer is not the same as an exciter ! the enhancer "only" spreads the stereo width or creates a stereo signal from a mono signal

an exciter adds additional overtones to the signal to make it more "shiny"

afaik there is no dedicated exciter block in the axe fx but you can build your own: simply split your signal and add a HPF and a distortion pedal (or amp) to the new route. set the HPF pretty high and play with the gain. now mix in the new route with very low level and turn it up till you hear a difference and go on from there.


for my own opinion in mixing i barely use an exciter cause it tends to wear out your ears pretty fast ;)
 
Exiter

That´s right.

They also use compression and expansion to the distortion unit. The reason is to keep the distortion ammount pretty constant and still make the output follow the input level.
I´m not shure if the axe II´s expander can work for this porpous though.

gin said:
enhancer is not the same as an exciter ! the enhancer "only" spreads the stereo width or creates a stereo signal from a mono signal

an exciter adds additional overtones to the signal to make it more "shiny"

afaik there is no dedicated exciter block in the axe fx but you can build your own: simply split your signal and add a HPF and a distortion pedal (or amp) to the new route. set the HPF pretty high and play with the gain. now mix in the new route with very low level and turn it up till you hear a difference and go on from there.


for my own opinion in mixing i barely use an exciter cause it tends to wear out your ears pretty fast ;)
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Thanks. But have any of you actually used the Aphex guitar exciter pedal and knows what it does? Said in a sloppy way, “it makes your old sound just sound better”.. For me it made my distortion way more clean and balanced. It is sort of an EQ, perhaps just much easier to use.

In my opinion a must have pedal, pre Axe era!
 
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Maybe something for the wish-thread.
I bet more people would appriciate an exiter in future firmware :)

Hansen said:
Thanks. But have any of you used Aphex guitar exciter pedal and knows what it does? Said in a sloppy way, “it makes your old sound just sound better”.. For me it made my distortion way more clean and balanced. It is sort of an EQ, perhaps just much easier to use.

In my opinion a must have pedal, pre Axe era!
Click to expand...
 
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I tried proposing this in the FW8 release thread a few weeks ago, but the post was left unanswered. I think there should be an multi-band exciter block in the unit. There should be different modes in it like harmonic and non-harmonic excitation and everything in between. Based on what Cliff has done with the presence parameter in the amp block I think this is not very far off.
 
Playing with the Dynamic and Definition controls of the Amp block has given me better results than any typical exciter effect I've tried.
 
I had asked about this feature once a long time ago, as well. Most people seem to assume that it is a compressor/expander and/or a stereo enhancer, which it is not. I have used one and for me, it made a noticeable improvement to most tones that I tried it with (when properly dialed-in). There are two components to their newer units, Exciter and Big Bottom. Here is my (probably flawed) understanding of how they work.

Most tones are not actually a single frequency, but a combination of frequencies that you hear as a single tone. The lowest one is usually the "fundamental" frequency. The other frequencies are multiples (or *almost* multiples, in the case of guitars) of the fundamental frequency called "harmonics" or "overtones". The fundamental determines what pitch you hear, while the harmonics contribute to timbre. The Exciter works by selectively adding in harmonics and altering the balance of odd to even harmonics for tones for which it is appropriate. (If you fed it a sine wave, it wouldn't add anything.) I also believe that it does something with phase shifting, but I don't know what.

As I understand it, speakers have a limited ability to accurately reproduce many frequencies at once. This limitation holds especially with low frequencies, which require more energy to produce. It is also worsened during note attack, when actual levels are much higher than throughout the decay. My understanding of how the Big Bottom effect works is that it subtracts out some of the bass frequencies during the initial attack, but leaves the lowest frequency alone. As a result, the speaker is freer to accurately reproduce he fundamental tone during the attack. As the tone transitions from the initial attack tone into the decay period, it gradually adds the subtracted low frequencies back in.

Anyone more familiar than I with signal processing or the technologies used here, please correct me.
 
I've used Exciters before. not to make a bad sound good, as there's no point to me to continue working with a bad sound and trying to polish it, but as an actual effect. works brilliant on icy clean tones. would love to see one in the Axe.
 
Surprised no one here said this: Just add a PEQ block towards the end of the chain. Set shelving on F1 and F5, isolate 250 Hz on F1 and 2500 Hz on F5 and increase gain for both. Sounds just like a BBE maximizer... I love it!
 
claxor said:
Surprised no one here said this: Just add a PEQ block towards the end of the chain. Set shelving on F1 and F5, isolate 250 Hz on F1 and 2500 Hz on F5 and increase gain for both. Sounds just like a BBE maximizer... I love it!
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The BBE Maximixers also add delay to low frequencies, this could be how the Big Bottom works also. I was playing with this for a while and uploaded a patch using a Crossover then put a delay on the lows. The delay block goes down to 1ms so if you want even less delay you can delete the delay block and put a Cab block on each row after the crossover and use the delay in row 1's cab block. The effect isn't really dramatic, but neither are the BBE's, it is a cool way to tailor and tighten the lows and mids - especially when combined with a PEQ.

Instead of a crossover you could just split into 2 cab blocks and use the cab block's hi/low pass filters to set the x-over point but making adjustments is much easier with the crossover.
 
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