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September 23, 2021 by Nick Messitte

Expanding on Compression: 3
Overlooked Techniques for
Improving Dynamic Range
In this blog, we take a look at dynamic processes often overlooked in
mixing and production, with tips on how to employ them using
compressor plug-ins.

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This article references a previous version of Neutron.

Learn about Neutron 4 and its powerful features
including Assistant View, Target Library, Unmask,
and more by clicking here.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what we do

here on the iZotope blog: for the article I wrote
 on common
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1/10 00:00
originally listed the following tip:
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“When many engineers say ‘compression’,

what they mean is “downward compression.”
In other words, bringing down the level of the
signal above the threshold that you set on your
compressor, to make louder things quieter. But
all too often, we forget about upward
compression, where quieter sounds are
brought up to the threshold point; this
technique can be quite handy in certain
situations for a more transparent effect (it can
also be approximated with parallel
compression, if you don’t have an upward-
compressor on hand).

Similarly, expansion—of both the upward and

downward variety—can greatly help your mix.
If I’m given a dull snare sound, I might not
reach for a static EQ, but for upward
expansion. That way, the harder the drummer
hits, the more attack, snap, and other goodies I
can bring out, leaving nasty resonances alone
for the ghost notes and softer strokes.

Let’s take a look at three other dynamic

processes often overlooked in mixing and
production, with tips on how to employ them.

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1. Upward
Compression
To quickly recap, in what we commonly call
“compression,” a signal is brought down in
level when it crosses a dialed-in threshold.
More accurately, this is termed “downward
compression.”

Upward compression, however, works from the

opposite end of the spectrum: when a quiet
signal falls below a predetermined threshold,
it’s brought up in level.
 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla nec purus feugiat,
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If you have a working knowledge of expansion

(covered later, don’t worry), you’d be forgiven
for scratching your head. Surely this must be
expansion, right? After all, you’re pushing a
signal up, not pulling it down.

To that point, I’d reply that you must take into

account the governing context of the signal as
a whole: In upward compression, the overall
dynamic range of the material is still being
reduced, not expanded. Therein lies the
difference. Yes, the lower level is now louder,
but the higher level remains the same, and the
net effect? The dynamic range has been
compacted—just like in regular old
compression.

I like to use an upward compressor on any

room-based track that isn’t quite roomy
enough. Let’s take the room mics of a drum
set: in the studio, perhaps the drum booth was
rather small, resulting in a closed-in sound.
Using an upward compressor in this scenario
can allow you to bring out the ambiance—the
space between the transients—and get a
roomier feel in your track.

You might be saying, why not use a transient-

shaper for this? You sure could—but they
 aren’t
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they can
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1/10 00:00
often add distortion. Sometimes I love that
nec, ultrices ipsum. Nulla facilisi. Nulla nec purus feugiat, vestibulum mi nec, ultrices…
distortion. But sometimes it’s uncalled for, and
that’s when an upward compressor is your
friend.

You can also use an upward compressor to

create a room-mic sound when no room mics
were actually used in the session. In fact,
recently I did this on a mix, turning a spare tom
mic into ambiance.

Let me explain: I was mixing a live track for the

indie band Leland Sundries, and I wanted more
room tone than was provided in the recording.
I didn’t like what artificial reverbs were giving
me, as this was a tightly miked, live-mix
scenario. Luckily for me, the rack tom on this
tune was never played in the song—not even
once! Instead, the mic had picked up a weirdly
balanced picture of the whole kit: kick, snare,
hat, cymbals, and floor tom were all
represented in excellent proportions.

But it wasn’t roomy sounding. Squashing the

track with a downward compressor wouldn’t
have worked, because that would’ve
emphasized the transients, and I was going for
the space between the transients. With an
upward compressor, I was able to bring out the
ring of the kick and snare, turn up the splash of
the cymbals, and emphasize other room-based
reverberations.

If you want to try this for yourself, it’s possible

with many popular software compressors. The
compressor in Neutron can be toggled into
upward mode when you use negative ratios.

Other plug-in manufacturers supply

compressors that work in an upward fashion
too; if you see a range value in your
 compressor,
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, and the
consectetur adipiscing elit.range
Nulla neccontrol can be
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1/10 00:00
oriented in both a positive and negative
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directions around the zero point, then chances
are the processor can provide this variant on
compression.

Just make sure, when experimenting, to pay

extra-careful attention to your threshold,
attack, and release parameters, and make sure
to use very low ratios (otherwise it’s hard to
control). To successfully pull off upward
compression requires an exacting touch,
because the way transients react to this
process is somewhat counterintuitive—i.e.,
you’ll probably want a faster attack than you’d
think, and the release will behave differently as
well. I tend to use fast attack values and fast
to medium fast release settings when utilizing
upward compression.

In drum room-mic scenarios, multiband

upward compression can also be your friend,
allowing you to avoid affecting the cymbals
too much, and letting you dig into the snare
and toms. Your mileage may vary though—in
fact, you might find yourself with no upward
compressor in your arsenal at all...

...Or so you would think, if you didn’t read this

tutorial!

It turns out that you can use parallel

compression to approximate much of what
upward compression can give you. It works as
follows:

Send an instrument or stereo bus to a

compressor on aux track. Set the threshold
very low, so that the compressor is constantly
working, giving you gain-reduction on soft
passages and loud passages alike. Counter to
how you might use a compressor on the track
 itself,
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consectetur employelit. very
Nullafast attack
nec purus feugiat,times, and,
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1/10 00:00
if you’re like me—that is, generally preferring
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faster releases for musical pump—you might
want to employ slower releases than you’d
normally use; the key here is to juice the
release settings so they won’t introduce
distortion.

These settings, auditioned in solo, might not

sound very musical, but when you blend the
parallel compression back in with the
unaffected signal, you’ll start to feel how it
works: because the compressor is kicked into
high gear on loud moments, you won’t really
notice the parallel track when the music is
really hot; however, when the music dips down
in level, the parallel track will be more audible,
and bolster the overall level of the material.
The result? Lower levels have been brought up,
almost as they are in upward compression.

What is an expander? Follow along as Sam

Loose demystifies dynamics processing,
continuing with expanders. Learn what
expanders are and how they increase the
dynamic range of a signal, and discover for
yourself how expanders can be used in mixing
and mastering to create a more cohesive
song.

What Is an Expander? | Audio Dyna…

Dyna…
 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla nec purus feugiat,

2. Upward
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Expansion
Upward expansion is akin to regular old
compression in a key way: it affects a louder
signal as it crosses the threshold. However,
instead of clamping down on the signal, the
expander pushes the sound up in level. Here is
where the process earns its name—it expands
the overall dynamic range of the signal.

By exactly how much is determined, in part, by

the ratio. Ratios in compression are expressed
in whole numbers greater than one (i.e, 2:1), as
you very well know. In expansion, though, the
top of the ratio is usually expressed as a
fraction of one. So if your compressor can give
you a ratio of 0.5:1, then most likely it’s
expanding at that point.

We could go deeper into the math of why this

is so, but let’s cover best use-cases instead. A
good candidate for upward expansion would
be a severely-compressed snare track that
seems devoid of life—something you received
from an inferior recording session. Using an
upward expander, you can, to some extent,
 recreate
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purus is jumping
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1/10 00:00
at you.
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The trick is to edge the threshold into a

moment when a thwack of the snare is just a
wee bit louder than the surrounding sonic
information (the rest of the drum leakage, in
other words). When you find this sweet spot,
the attack, release, and ratio settings will help
you shape and boost that initial thwack.
Shorter attack times will grab the hit sooner,
and quicker release times will bring it back
down to its original volume more quickly. The
opposite, of course, is true. Electric basses
that have been squashed during inferior
recording sessions can also benefit from
expansion employed in this way.

One can also use expansion’s attack and

release parameters to grab unexpected parts
of the signal and raise those, thereby creating
an unnatural/off-kilter effect for aesthetic
purposes. Imagine if a dramatic tom hit rose in
level not on the thwack of the tom, but on the
resulting ringing. That would be weird…but it
could be awesome! You could achieve this
effect with a slower attack, because the
expander would still be reacting to the initial
transient. It would just react far later than
you’d expect. This kind of trickery might work
with experimental rock of the sort Deerhoof
produces.

It’s also worth noting that upward expanders

can be employed creatively on sampled
material to add a bounce that simply wasn’t
present before. All you need to do is find an
element within that sample, center the
threshold around that element, and adjust the
other parameters to bring it out.
 Personally,
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often use upward
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1/10 00:00
multiband. Bringing out the body of a snare
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drum just on the hard hits can be achieved
handily with an upward expander looped into
the 100–220 Hz range. You can also use this
technique to bring out the warmth of a thin
guitar with too much pick attack, particularly if
you sidechain the expander to the guitar’s
most brittle frequencies. That way, when the
excessive picking noise comes in, the attack
brings up the pleasant midrange at almost the
same time.

The possibilities for implementation are many.

Just be aware that expansion often behaves
oppositely to traditional compression. For
example, where you would use make-up gain
to raise the level of compressed instrument,
you might need to attenuate the level of an
expanded sound, so it doesn’t jump in gain.
Just make sure to create headroom before this
in the signal chain in order to avoid clipping.

3. Downward
Expansion
Downward expansion (conventionally referred
to as just “expansion”) is similar to its upward
counterpart, but with one fundamental
difference: when a signal drops below a set
threshold, the downward expander pulls it even
farther down toward the noise floor. You
probably use downward expansion quite often,
though you might not know it—it’s the very
process that powers a conventional noise-
gate.
 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla nec purus feugiat,
vestibulum mi nec, ultrices ipsum. Nulla facilisi. Nulla nec purus feugiat, vestibulum mi
1/10 00:00 nec, ultrices ipsum. Nulla facilisi. Nulla nec purus feugiat, vestibulum mi nec, ultrices…

Still, downward expansion can be used for far

more than gating. Rather than kill extraneous
sounds outright, you can use downward
expansion as a subtler, more transparent
transient-shaper. This is not unlike upward
compression, which can also be employed like
a transient shaper. Just think of it this way: an
upward compressor is similar to pushing the
sustain parameter up on a transient-shaper,
while a downward expander is not unlike
pulling the sustain parameter down.

On drum samples this can come in particularly

handy. Say you’ve got a loop with an awesome
feel, but you want to emphasize its transients
and downplay the atmosphere. You can use
downward expansion to shape the decay of
the ambiance, thus emphasizing transients in
a subtractive process. This can sound audibly
less distorted than using a transient-shaping
plug-in—or a traditional noise-gate—to achieve
the same effect. It can also sound very
distorted if you use quick release times (which
can be fun).

Downward expansion, like its upward variant,

also works well in multiband settings. If you’ve
got kick or high-hat leakage on your snare,
multiband downward expansion can help take
 it out
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, of the adipiscing
consectetur mix. Simply elit. Nullaput the feugiat,
nec purus processor on
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1/10 00:00
your lowest frequencies for the kick, or on your
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highest frequencies for the hat. It won’t
mitigate the problem completely, but you’ll be
able to tame it. You can also use expanders on
808s to duck them out of the way of other
bass information quickly. This is useful in hip-
hop.

Here’s another multiband trick: you can use a

multiband downward expander like a dynamic
EQ, though of course, it’ll act counterintuitively,
due to a fundamental difference in operation;
whereas a dynamic EQ will attenuate
frequencies when they hit harder, a multiband
downward expander will cut frequencies when
they’re decidedly quieter.

Why would we use such a technique? Let’s say

you’ve got a bus with a whole bunch of guitars
chugging along. In the 200–400 Hz region they
sound awesome, but only when the song kicks
into full gear. When these guitars sound more
softly, their thickness gets in the way of the
rest of the mix, maybe because the drummer is
playing quieter, and the snare isn’t cutting
through as much.

This is a case for using a multiband downward

expander over a dynamic EQ: when the guitars
hit hard, the chunkiness is heard in all its glory,
but in softer moments, those chunky
frequencies are more tame. Of course, don’t be
too drastic. All you need to do is shave off a
couple dB or so.

Conclusion
Compression, in its classic form, is a beautiful
thing—but it isn’t the only thing. And, it’s worth
 noting
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, that traditional
consectetur compression
adipiscing elit. Nulla nec purus feugiat,techniques
vestibulum mi nec, ultrices ipsum. Nulla facilisi. Nulla nec purus feugiat, vestibulum mi
1/10 00:00
have been employed for so long that even
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some EDM producers are getting sick of
clamping down on signals. What have they
turned to instead? According to Andrew Eisele
—whom I interviewed for a piece on mixing
electronic music—the answer is expansion.

Yes, tides turn, and this tide might be turning…

upward. So, when it comes to dynamic
processes for mixing purposes, it is our
sincere hope at iZotope that we’ve, ahem,
expanded your knowledge.

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 6 parallel compression mistakes in
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vestibulum mi nec, ultrices ipsum. Nulla facilisi. Nulla nec purus feugiat, vestibulum mi
1/10 00:00 mixing
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