The Aphex Aural Exciter is great by the way....I've just spend an hour or so playing with it. Of course it's not something that's needed on synth VST's because you can make a sound brighter to begin with, but on recorded material that needs brightening up or exciting, it's really amazing. For instance I'm quite partial to chopping up samples of old orchestral records and it really works wonders when the source material is muddy or lacking in clarity. I'm using the "AX" mode on a send bus and just mixing a little in with the dry signal.