BOB DIFAZIO: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. My name is Bob DiFazio. I want to thank you for joining us here in the studio. I'm here to show you the new Aphex 204 processor right next to me here. It's the silver guy, it's one unit, and it's a combination of some favorites from over the years.

The Aphex company has put out the Aural Exciter for at least 20 years now, and also has put out a product called the Big Bottom, which has been a plugin, and now you have the Aphex Aural Exciter and the Big Bottom together in this one device, and it's two channels. Channel 1 has an Aural Exciter and a Big Bottom and so does channel 2.

These devices are designed to increase the content of sounds in some way, and so, on a basic level, the Aural Exciter is going to add a certain amount of tonal harmonic distortion overtones to a waveform which it processes, and it will target a certain frequency range and add either even or odd harmonic distortion or inharmonic distortion to the sound, which brings out the treble and the presence in an interesting way, just similar to an equalizer. And the Big Bottom Pro basically is designed to function like the loudness button on your receiver; when you hit the loudness button, all of the sudden there's a fuller sound. Well, what Aphex wants to be able to do, and I think that they do in this device fairly well, is to be able to increase that range of frequencies in the bass range for listeners to experience a more intense signal without actually increasing the peak volume, so the bass in your track will seem to pop out of you yet the level should not peak beyond what it was peaking before you processed it with the big bottom. So, we'll listen and hear what it sounds like on a variety of sounds, kick drums and snare drums, and also a full mix, so let's take a closer look at this guy.

This is channel 1 here which consists of the three knobs for the Big Bottom and three knobs for the Aural Exciter. The job of the Big Bottom is really to increase the presence of the bass frequencies, and the drive parameter basically corresponds to the amount of extra bass sustain you're creating. The tune sets the bass frequency range. So, what I'm going to do is pump a kick drum through channel 1, and we're going to listen to the spectrum f frequencies that we can increase and sustain by changing the tune setting.

So here's the dry kick drum [BOB PLAYS A KICK DRUM TRACK DRY], I'll increase the mix to full with the drive and tune set center [BOB MODIFIES PARAMETERS]. Over here is dry, wet, and let's go through our tune [BOB CONTINUES TO AUDITION KICK DRUM TRACK AND MODIFY PARAMETERS], and then, just for kicks, let's turn the drive all the way up and bring the tune down around just halfway to low [BOB CONTINUES TO AUDITION KICK DRUM TRACK AND MANIPULATE PARAMETERS].

And what we'll do now is disengage the Big Bottom and move over to the Aural Exciter. Now, the Aural Exciter is going to add tonal harmonics or overtones to your signal that basically amounts to THD or tonal harmonic distortion of the signal, and you have tune selector for your frequency center, the harmonics that you would like to choose, either odd or even, and then you have a mix of the overall signal. So, we'll put the mix to 100% wet, leave the harmonics in the center, and we'll go through the tuning function with the same sound. Let's first listen to it again dry [BOB PLAYS A KICK DRUM TRACK DRY], and with the Aural Exciter [BOB APPLIES AURAL EXCITER AND MANIPULATES PARAMETERS]. So, it really brings out the treble without using any equalizer, basically.

Now, let's take a listen to another isolated sound, this time a snare drum that is not sampled [BOB PLAYS A DRUM TRACK WITH SNARE DRY], and here comes the Aural Exciter. First the dry signal [BOB CONTINUES TO PLAY DRUM TRACK DRY], and now with the exciter [BOB APPLIES AURAL EXCITER], then we'll go through the tuning [BOB TWEAKS AURAL EXCITER PARAMETERS]. So, you can really add a lot of bite to your snare drums, once again, without using an equalizer.

And then lastly, let's listen to an entire song through this piece of gear here, and we'll use both the Big Bottom and the Aural Exciter.

[BOB PLAYS AN ENTIRE SONG AND APPLIES BOTH BIG BOTTOM AND AURAL EXCITER]

So, this provides a pseudo-mastering option for you as well as an individualized signal processor. So you might be saying to yourself, "Well I have had the plugin version of these processors for some time now, and they work fine. Why should I switch to the hardware?" Well, at only $100 a channel, this hardware version provides you with the ability to really push the effect all the way. When you send the effect all the way to maximum in the computer, you get a certain kind of artifact that is based on the way that the software plugins work, and this hardware device here seems to be smoother, especially when pushed to the max, so that's the reason I'd say that there's still good reason to have hardware even though there are plugin versions that have been of this type of equipment for some time.

So, I appreciate you watching this video. I hope you learned something. I hope you'll join us again here at Gearwire.Com. My name is Bob DiFazio. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.