TC Electronic DB6, User Manual

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DB6 – Basic concepts and operation
DB6 English Manual (2014-10-07) 22
Operating DB6
DB6 is equipped with one or more signal pro-
cessing cards. Each card encompasses four so-
called engines.
Two of these engines are running the Loudness
Wizard algorithms (see “Loudness Wizard” on
page 93), while the other two are running the
LM6
metering algorithms (see “LM2 (optional)”
on page 148).
As you can easily see, DB6 is a „headless sys-
tem“ – it has no front panel controls (with the ex-
ception of the Reset button).
DB6 is operated using the
TC Icon
software,
which you can download from the TC Electronic
website.
You can use the same version of the TC Icon
software to operate DB6 and other professional
broadcast products from TC Electronic (e.g. DB4
and DB8 MKII).
Accordingly, a significant part of this manual
covers operating DB6 using TC Icon software
running on a standard computer, and the screen
shots you see are taken from the OS X or Win-
dows versions of this software.
DB6 offers a variety of ways to engage or disen-
gage audio processing. Processing may be in-
voked automatically, depending on format, level,
physical inputs etc., while remote control can be
achieved via Ethernet, GPI, SDI metadata etc.
When setting up the device, make sure to
only engage the methods you wish to use.
For
example, if GPI inputs are not used, make sure to
make sure to disable the respective input.
Please invest some time in learning TC Icon’s
basic concepts
– you will benefit from it when
operating systems that may include many net-
worked TC signal processors.
Hardware versions
DB6 is available in six different hardware ver-
sions: DB6 Single, DB6 Multi with one, two or
three 3G Transmission cards installed, and DB6
AES in balanced and unbalanced versions.
DB6 Single handles one SD/HD/3G stream,
making it the perfect choice e.g. for local broad-
casters or as an intelligent loudness manage-
ment tool in an OB van. DB6 single cannot be
expanded to handle more audio streams.
DB6 Multi comes with the ability to process one
stream right out of the box, but users can install
one or two additional
3G Transmission
dual-
engine cards.
DB6 AES (balanced and unbalanced) gives you
up to 16 channels of unbalanced AES I/O on
BNC connectors. Depending on your integrated
transmission system, you may prefer to pass
your entire SDI signal through a loudness man-
agement system, or you may prefer to route only
the audio signal through an insert point. With
DB6 AES, you get the opportunity to choose the
latter scenario as well.