Optimod-Surround 8685 V1.0 Operating Manual - Orban

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OPERATION ORBAN MODEL 8685
that the mastering engineer would want to tweak a preset carefully to complement
the program material being mastered. The 8685 provides important tools to allow a
mastering engineer to fine-tune the processing to complement the program material:
• Three bands of parametric equalization with low-noise filter structures and
curves modeled after classic second-order analog bell-shaped EQ.
• A powerful, low-noise parametric bass shelving equalizer with sweepable frequency
and a choice of 6, 12, or 18 dB/octave slopes.
• Two-band and five-band compressor/limiters with phase-linear crossovers and
powerful controls, including attack time, release time, threshold, knee, and ratio
for each band. These compressor/limiters also offer user-adjustable interband
coupling, allowing the user to operate them anywhere from quasi-wideband to
fully independent.
• A look-ahead peak limiter with advanced, proprietary distortion reduction algorithms.
You cannot create a user preset “from scratch”; you must create it by modifying an
existing preset, factory or user. Each preset has an “easy adjustment” facility called
LESS-MORE, which is a one-knob provision for turning the amount of processing up
or down.
Systematically, the following is a good method for creating mastering presets. It assumes
that you have already set the processor mixer controls to achieve normal drive
levels.
A) Connect to the 8685 via 8685 PC Remote software. Compared to using the
8685’s front panel, using PC Remote gives you more convenient access to the
8685’s many tuning controls.
Note that by drawing a marquee around several controls by clicking and
dragging with your computer’s mouse, you can temporarily couple them
so you can adjust several bands’ controls (for example, the LIMITER ATTACK
controls) simultaneously. The coupling will remain active until you click
outside the area that the marquee encloses.
B) Decide whether you are going to use two-band or five-band processing.
Two-band processing retains any fixed equalization originally applied to
the program (except for a mild amount of dynamic adjustment to bass
below 200 Hz); five-band processing performs an “automatic reequalization”
function. Both flavors of processing can be extremely
smooth and unobtrusive. Because the five-band compressor/limiter offers
user-adjustable interband coupling that determines the “discreteness” of
the multiband compression, it is usually the best choice.
If you are going to use two-band processing, recall the 2B SOFT KNEE preset.
If you are going to use five-band processing, recall the 5B SOFT KNEE
preset. If you want to do look-ahead peak limiting without any other dy-