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T-Exciter: is this the plugin to help your music production and mixing?

Techivation has just released T-Exciter: a plugin to bring excitement to your music-making. We’ve been keeping an eye on this UK company.

T-Exciter is the second plugin we’ve tested out from the new UK company Techivation. Their plugins focus on production and mixing and to further that they’ve just released this exciter plugin for use on just about anything in your music, or on a full mix.

Using the many presets and the easy on the eyes user interface, we through the T-Exciter on some things we had recorded and soft synths. Let us show you what we heard.

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A lot of listening to music these days seems to be via smartphone, laptop speakers or small earbuds. Translation of low-end information onto these small speakers can be hard to manage as a music maker. Adding some excitement to these elements — whether subtle or not — helps to make these cut through. Here’s where the T-Exciter shines.

Exciters have been around for years — both in hardware and software — even mix engineers like Andrew Scheps will make sure his vocal has an exciter plugin either on it or as a parallel.

Installation and opening up the T-Exciter was simple as ever. Kudos to Techivation for another clean and clear user interface. The controls are simple: Power On/Off, A/B and Menu on the top left, Input and Output faders on the sides, Excitement knob in the middle, Mix and Width knobs on the bottom left and Effect modes on the right.

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The Menu holds all the goodies, Presets, Saving, Loading and changing the scale size of the GUI (graphic user interface). It’s here where I decided to launch off with a preset called ‘Vocal – Softer Air’ over one of our Live from Happy Performances by Wallace which was stripped back to vocal and acoustic guitar.

Sound-wise, I needed to focus and be present to use the T-Exciter and I think you should as well. Too much turning of that Excitement knob would be a step in the wrong direction. If I can offer some advice, exciters are best used in small doses. Just using a slight amount will help bring out that vocal in a mix, or bring up the perceived volume of an instrument.

Back to the Wallace performance, I found that minimal use of the T-Exciter gave the vocal and guitar a newfound air. The vocal was a lot more present and the fretboard of the guitar came out. However, this was a completed mix — tried and tested — so I wondered if I bounced/printed this and listened on a phone, would it be too bright?

Moving away from that I place the T-Exciter on an Arturia CS-80 soft synth. This is where the magic happened in tweaking the mix and width knobs and changing the Effect modes, I was able to make this synth more exciting and it floated in the high range nicely.

exciter plugin

The focus of an exciter probably should come in the production and mixing phase of your music-making. Adding it to the synth was cool, but made me think if I could add it to the backing vocals of a song I’m currently mixing. Further to that, I thought the T-Exciter would be very welcome on percussion to make it bright and shine. Automation of the T-Exciter plugin on a chorus would be ideal.

The T-Exciter comes in at $39 USD with an intro price of $29 USD ($42 AUD) or at the moment you can get the full bundle of Techivation plugins for 40% off at $124 USD ($181 AUD) and you’ll get their next release too.

For more details head over to Techivation’s website.