Acustica IVORY5, Manual

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Ivory5 MAL-2 is Acustica’s own interpretation of a two-band peak limiter inspired by a fa-
mous mastering dynamic processor from a well-known British manufacturer.
Don’t be fooled, it is not a 1:1 copy of the hardware, so don’t expect the same behaviour!
It’s the perfect choice to control the highest peaks in your music program if inserted at the
end of the audio chain in the most traditional way, but it can also be used as an extreme
tone-shaping tool on individual tracks.
To use both limiters you need to turn HF ON; this enables a crossover at 2kHz that splits the
incoming signal into two bands, allowing you to work separately on different portions of the
spectrum (LF and HF). When HF ON is bypassed, then the processor becomes a classic
wide-band limiter.
NOTE:
-This isn’t your everyday digital brickwall limiter, but the emulation of an analogue processor
that, as opposed to all digital limiters, cannot predict the future. This means that there’s
always the chance that, in the event of a sudden loud and sharp transient, few samples
above the preset output level might slip through the processor, before the gain control cir-
cuit is able to react to the situation.
This is the reason why in the original device some clippers are strategically placed in the
circuit in order to take care of those unruly offenders.
Despite being in the digital domain, we decided to maintain this behaviour, with a view to
preserving the ‘analogue’ flavour of this limiter. The basic concept is that despite the pres-
ence of these clippers, they should operate under the hood, very rarely and in the most
unperceivable way.
Details:
Each limiter acts as an extremely fast processor, preventing the output signal from exceed-
ing a preset level. However, their intervention may not be one hundred percent effective in
all cases, and some transients may be able to pass through the limiter’s mesh, exceeding
the preset level.
In this case, properly set clippers come into play and limit these peaks by a fraction of a dB.
-A final operating note that should not be overlooked and may be misleading.
The Ivory5 MAL-2 features two limiters whose thresholds and output levels are internally set
at a fixed level. The LF and/or HF Threshold control(s) should be rather considered as input
gain controls, with a range of -20 to +20 dB.