CHAPTER 6 Expansion and Gating

The most underutilized effect: hear what you are missing.

MIX SMART QUICK START : Expansion and Gating

Goals ■

Practical motivations include noise reduction and leakage reduction.

■

Fit tracks together in your mix more easily through cleverly reshaped amplitude envelopes and supportive gated reverbs and ambience tracks.

■

Feature tracks by extracting exaggerated ambience and artifacts, manipulating timbre, and tremolo.

Gear ■

Master the unusual set of parameters and features: threshold, slope, attack, release, fade, decay, hold, and range.

■

As you learn compression/limiting, you get better at expansion/gating, and vice versa.