Tutorial - TC Electronic Finalizer 96K User Manual

APPENDIX

Tutorial

The Finalizer is an extremely powerful tool that allows you to
tighten up most material. Working intelligently on several
frequency-areas the Finalizer will enhance the energy and and the
level of your mix, making the sound punchier and louder yet
adding the feel of air when needed.
As there are different approaches to the Finalizer, we created this
tutorial to make you familiar with the Finalizer.
Be aware that processing your material with the Finalizer can be
rather addictive, in the sense that you might want to add more
and more and sometimes too much from the Finalizer’s powerful
tools. However, though you do not notice at first, heavy
Multiband compression and Soft-clipping does generate “listen-
ing fatique” more easily than material where more of the natural
dynamic range is preserved.
So use your ears and and enjoy the features of the Finalizer as so
many already do, by applying the right amount of processing in
any given situation.
The MAIN PAGE of the Finalizer shows you the signal flow, and
the actual order of the processing.
Select your type of Input: Analog or Digital. If you are working
with an Analog Input you should use the level bars to optimize
the performance of the A to D converter.
Remember to choose the right Sample Rate, i.e. if you are target-
ing on CD you should always choose 44.1kHz.
Now recall the CD-Master preset, by pressing the RECALL key,
select CD-Master and press OK to recall.
In the EQ you can change the spectral shape of your material.
Select between DRG, Stereo Adjust, Dynamic Equalizer,
Parametric Equalizer, External Insert, MS Encoding/Decoding
and Stereo Enhance.
Optimizing the level of your material begins in the Normalizer.
Here you have a graphic 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 is a great help when you clean up the basic mix,
and works 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
follows:
Set the Ratios to 1:32, this is the steepness of the Expander.
Now adjust the Threshold. The Expander starts working when the
signal drops below the Threshold point.
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 is the heart of the Finalizer. This section adds
that extra “punch” to your material.
When you are applying Multiband Compression you have to
survey the program material, i.e.; is there too much or too little
top-end or low-end? 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”
preset. 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 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 overall 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
band levels, using them like a three band equalizer. The second
way is to individually compress the three bands. It is here, in the
Multiband Compressor, where you will hear the big difference.
A good Compressor will always tighten up a mix, but it will also
remove some of the dynamic expression. The key to the operation
of any Compressor is the Attack and Release times. These two
parameters greatly influence how ”tight” the mix is going to be or
how “open” the material will sound after compression.
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