Understanding the Expander on BEACN MicUpdated 9 months ago
The Expander on the BEACN Mic will help you suppress unwanted noise activating your Mic. In this article, we'll explain what an Expander is, and how you can use it to improve your sound.
What is an Expander?
The Expander on BEACN Mic is a Downward Expander, meaning that everything below the threshold will be attenuated to be quieter. This can be used to help gate out unwanted sounds such as keyboard clicks, and when used in tandem with the adaptive Noise Suppression on BEACN Mic, can help greatly reduce background noise.
Using the Expander
The Expander on BEACN Mic has two modes:
Simple
This mode gives you two controls to set - Threshold and Expand Amount
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Threshold - To set this, drag the arrows on the THRESHOLD line to a level above the waveform when you are NOT speaking. Be sure to have any active room noise present when you are setting your threshold, this includes keyboard noise and any other ambient noise.
- Expand Amount - This is how aggressive the Expander will be. If you find sound still getting through that is below the threshold you can increase the amount.
Advanced Mode
This mode gives you 4 controls to set - Threshold, Ratio, Attack, and Release
- Threshold - To set this, drag the arrows on the THRESHOLD line to a level above the waveform when you are NOT speaking. Be sure to have any active room noise present when you are setting your threshold, this includes keyboard noise and any other ambient noise.
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Ratio - This determines the amount of noise reduction applied to a signal once it has dropped below the threshold. In the screenshot below from the BEACN App, we have a ratio 2:1 meaning for every 1dB below the threshold, it will attenuate 2 dB (so if the signal is -1dB below the threshold it will attenuate to -3dB). You would adjust this if you want the Expander to be more aggressive.
- Attack - This is the time it will take for the Expander to go from zero attenuation to full attenuation based on the Ratio and Threshold settings.
- Release - Sets how fast the attenuation recovers after a signal level crosses the Threshold.
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