3-48
OPERATION
ORBAN MODEL 1100
effect that many find fatiguing.
To avoid excessive density with fast Five-Band release time, we recommend using no
more than 5dB gain reduction in band 3, compensating for any lost loudness by
speeding up the
AGC
R
ELEASE
instead.
Multiband Release; Speech Multiband Release
control can be switched to any
of seven settings. To understand how to adjust this control for video programming,
please see the discussion above under
MB
D
RIVE
.
The
S
PEECH
MB
R
ELEASE
control overrides the
MB
R
ELEASE
control when OPTIMOD-
PC automatically detects speech (page 3-5). You may wish to set the
S
PEECH
MB
R
ELEASE
control faster for speech (to maximize smoothness and uniformity) and
slower on music (to prevent excessive build-up of density).
Compression Threshold; Speech Compression Threshold
controls set the com-
pression threshold for music and speech in each band (following OPTIMOD-PC’s
automatic speech/music discriminator), in units of dB. We recommend making small
changes around the factory settings to preserve the internal headroom built into
the processing chain. These controls will affect the spectral balance of the processing
above threshold, but are also risky because they can significantly affect the amount
of distortion produced by the back-end clipping system.
You can use these controls to set independent frequency balances for music and
speech (page 3-5).
MB Gate
(“Multiband Gate Threshold”) control determines the lowest input level
that will be recognized as program by OPTIMOD-PC; lower levels are considered to
be noise or background sounds and cause the AGC or multiband compressor to gate,
effectively freezing gain to prevent noise breathing.
There are two independent gating circuits in OPTIMOD-PC. The first affects the AGC
and the second affects the five-band compressor. Each has its own threshold control.
The multiband silence gate causes the gain reduction in bands 2 and 3 of the five-
band compressor to move quickly to the average gain reduction occurring in those
bands when the gate first turns on. This prevents obvious midrange coloration un-
der gated conditions, because bands 2 and 3 have the same gain.
The gate also independently freezes the gain of the two highest frequency bands
(forcing the gain of the highest frequency band to be identical to its lower
neighbor), and independently sets the gain of the lowest frequency band according
to the setting of the
DJ
B
ASS
boost control (in the Equalization screen). Thus, with-
out introducing obvious coloration, the gating smoothly preserves the average
overall frequency response “tilt” of the five-band compressor, broadly maintaining
the “automatic equalization” curve it generates for a given piece of program mate-
rial.
If the
MB
GATE
control is turned
O
FF
, the
DJ
B
ASS
control (in the Equaliza-
tion screen) is disabled.
