Ableton Forum

Hi,

Hope this is not a stupid question and somebody better informed can shed some light on this. I am trying to study some of the Ableton devices (and the related audio processing concepts) and noticed that if I add a Multiband Dynamics device on an instrument, the output gain seems to get affected without touching any controls. I have tried this on a sine operator and on some drum loops and the peak meters on the track as well as the master fader show different values (as does SPAN) when I have the device on versus when I bypass it.

I assumed that without any processing at all i.e. when the device is at its default values, the input signal would remain unchanged? Is this the expected behaviour? As per the Ableton manual the crossovers points defined by the low and high frequency settings seem to be hard as per this statement:

The frequency sliders below the High and Low buttons adjust the crossovers that define the frequency ranges for each band. If the low frequency is set to 500 Hz and the high frequency is set to 2000 Hz, then the low band goes from 0 Hz to 500 Hz, the mid band from 500 Hz to 2000 Hz and the high band from 2000 Hz up to whatever your soundcard or sample rate supports.

But is it possible that there are some internal phase shifts or frequency crossovers within the device that are causing this when summing the bands back together? If I try something similar with an EQ to split the bands and sum them again, then it does not seem to cause similar issues.

Cheers,

Ableton 11.3.x
MacOS

noizfactory wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 06, 2024 12:54 pm

is it possible that there are some internal phase shifts or frequency crossovers within the device that are causing this

Yep, considering any of the gain knobs are at 0dB or no boost, the difference you're hearing/seeing is due to the crossovers. Multiband Dynamics is not transparent even with everything at "0".

Thanks for the confirmation! I assumed I was missing something obvious and messing up some setting at my end. Good to know!