TC Electronic Finalizer, User Manual

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APPENDIX Tutorial
Finalizer Tutorial
The basic idea with the Finalizer is to touch up the last details of
your mix and enhance the energy and level, in order to make it
sound punchier and louder.
As there are different approaches to the Finalizer, we created this
tutorial to familiarize you with the Finalizer.
The mainpage of the Finalizer shows you the signal flow, and the
actual order of the processor you are working.
The Input
Select your type of input: Analog or digital. If you are working
with an analog input you should use Pro/Con and the level bars to
optimize the performance of the A to D converter.
Remember to choose the right sample rate, i.e. if you targeting on
CD you should always choose 44.1 kHz.
Now recall the CD-Master preset, by pressing the RECALL key,
select CD-Master and press OK to recall.
The EQ
In the EQ you have the possibility, of changing the spectral
shape of your material.
Inserts
Select between Stereo adjust, De-essing or DRG.
Normalizer
Optimizing the level of your material starts in the Normalizer.
Here you have a graphical presentation of the incoming signal.
By increasing the GAIN, you decrease the headroom, shown as
two dotted lines.
You should set the GAIN such that the signal peaks are just
below or above the dotted headroom lines.
The Expander
The Expander is a great help in cleaning up the basic mix, either
as a soft expander or as a sharp gate.
Try to listen to the start of your mix, do you have any tape or
recording noise ?
If you have and you want to remove it, use the expander as fol-
lows:
Set the Ratio’s to 1:32, this is the steepness of the expander.
Now adjust the THRESHOLD so the expander only works when
the music is not there.
Play the music from the top a couple of times, and confirm that
the start is silenced.
If you only want to remove tape noise, it might be enough to use
the high band expander only.
The Compressor
The Compressor is the heart of the Finalizer. This section adds
that extra “punch” to your material.
When you are doing multiband compression, you have to do a
survey of the program material, i.e. Is there to much or too little
top-end or low-ende? Is the midrange well defined? A standard
situation could be that you have a mix which sounds good, but
lacks tightness and could use more of that “in your face” sound.
Now put the Finalizer in bypass, and recall the “CD-Master” pre-
set. Start your mix and de-activate the Bypass. You will hear an
immediate change in the sound of your mix, because the “CD-
Master” preset was designed to tighten up on almost all types of
rhythmic music that you hear today. In most cases, you will only
have to adjust the input level by using the Normalizer.
If you want to make changes to the over all relationship of the
low, mid, high bands using the Compressor, you have two paths
that you may take to accomplish this task. The first way is to alter
the bandlevels, using them like a three band equalizer. The sec-
ond way is to individually compress the three bands. It is here, in
the multi-band Compressor, where you will here the big differ-
ence.
A good Compressor will always tighten up a mix, but it will also
remove some of the dynamic expression. Key to the operation of
any Compressor is the attack and release times. These two para-
meters greatly influence how ”tight” the mix is going to be or
how “open” the material will sound after compression.
As a rule-of-thumb the low-band works best with fast attack
times and rather slow release times because low frequencies have
a long wavelength. In the mid-band you can use roughly the same
attack time, but the release time should be a bit faster since the
human ear is very sensitive in this area. If you set the mid-band
release too long it will sound unnatural. The hi-band works best
with an attack time that is a bit slower than the other two bands
because it will let high frequency transients to pass the
Compressor. Letting these peaks through the Compressor pre-
vents that stressed and over-compressed sound. The release time
of the hi-band should be fast, like the mid-band, for the same rea-
sons, to increase the “openness” of the Compressor.