These notes will help you get the most out of Excitable Boy, the aural enhancer / exciter that goes too far. DirectX and VST versions are available.
Excitable Boy enhances an audio signal by isolating the bass and treble portions,
and applying separate distortion to them to generate more bass and treble content.
When this technique is appled subtly, the distortion is not noticable as distortion,
rather it adds a candy gloss to the sound. Several plugins and hardware processing units on the market use this technique.
Excitable Boy doesn't like the idea of applying effects subtly.
Excitable Boy doesn't know when to stop.
Excitable Boy goes too far.
Of course, if you want a standard enhancer, you can turn all the knobs down low, and get that suble glossy sheen.
Controls
The Bass Cutoff knob controls how much of the bass portion of the signal to enhance. Low values will only process the very lowest frequencies, higher values will include some low-mids as well.
The Bass Drive knob controls how much distortion is applied to the isolated bass portion of the signal. Low values will generate a few subtle harmonics, high values will generate extreme distortion and even noise.
The Bass Mix knob controls how much of the distortion is mixed back in.
The Treble Cutoff knob controls how much of the treble portion of the signal to enhance. Low values will include quite a lot of mids and high-mids, higher values will only process the very highest frequencies.
The Treble Drive knob controls how much distortion is applied to the isolated treble portion of the signal. Low values will generate a few subtle harmonics (high-frequency content that wasn't in the original signal), high values will generate extreme distortion and noise.
The Treble Mix knob controls how much of the distortion is mixed back in.
The Mode buttons switch between a simple soft clipping distortion and a more exotic sinusoidal algorithm. As low drive settings the results are quite similar, high values make the difference more apparent.
Finally there is a Gain knob to adjust the output level, as lots of drive and a high mix value can boost the volume way too high.