Orban OPTIMOD 8685, Operating Manual

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OPERATION ORBAN MODEL 8685
basic flavor of the recordings from the era of the 1950s through 1970s.
For example, we do not attempt to exaggerate high frequency energy in
the GOLD
preset. The highs in recordings of this era are often noisy, dis-
torted, or have other technical problems that make them unpleasant
sounding when the processor over-equalizes them in an attempt to emu-
late the high frequency balance of recently recorded material.
GREGG: GREGG and GREGG OPEN all use a 200 Hz band1/band2 crossover fre-
quency to achieve a bass sound similar to the classic five-band Gregg Labs FM proc-
essors designed by Orban’s Vice President of New Product Development, Greg
Ogonowski. Dynamically, these presets produce a slight increase in bass energy be-
low 100 Hz and a decrease of bass energy centered at 160 Hz. This bass sound works
particularly well with speakers having good bass response.
In terms of loudness, midrange texture, and HF texture, these presets are similar to
the
LOUD-HOT+BASS
presets.
IMPACT: IMPACT is intended for CHR and similar formats where attracting a large
audience (maximizing cume) is more important than ensuring long time-spent-
listening. This is a bright, “major-market” preset that has a great deal of presence
energy to cut through on lower-quality speakers.
Its sound changes substantially as the
L
ESS
-M
ORE
control is turned down—fast peak
limiting decreases while bass punch and transparency improve. Therefore, exploring
various Less-More settings is worthwhile with
IMPACT
, because, for many circum-
stances, this preset will be “over the top” if it is not turned down with
L
ESS
-M
ORE
.
JAZZ: JAZZ is specifically tailored toward broadcasters that play mostly instrumental
music, particularly classic jazz (Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, etc.). It is a quiet preset with
a very clean, mellow high end to prevent stridency on saxophones and other horns.
It preserves much of the qualities of the original recordings, doing light re-
equalization. The preset produces very low listening fatigue, so it is a good choice
for broadcasters that want listeners to stay all day. Note that broadcasters pro-
gramming “smooth jazz” should investigate the
SMOOTH JAZZ
preset, which is
much louder and more “commercial”-sounding.
LOUD
-
HOT : A very bright and present with up-front vocals. Release time is medium.
NEWS-TALK: This preset is quite different from the others. It is based on the fast
multiband release time setting so it can quickly perform automatic equalization of
substandard program material, including telephone. It is useful for creating a uni-
form, intelligible sound from widely varying source material, particularly source ma-
terial that is “hot from the field” with uncontrolled quality.
SPORTS: Similar to NEWS-TALK except the AGC Release (AGC Release Time) is
slower and the Gate Thresh (Gate Threshold) is higher. This recognizes that most
sports programming has very low signal-to-noise ratio due to crowd noise and other
on-field sounds, so the preset does not pump this up as the NEWS-TALK preset
would tend to do.