Orban OPTIMOD-PC 1100 Operating Manual page 119

3-11
OPTIMOD-PC OPERATION
allows you to set a "width limit" to prevent over-enhancement of material with sig-
nificant stereo content, and will always limit the ratio of L–R / L+R to unity or less.
Two-Band Gated AGC: The AGC is a two-band device, using Orban's patented
"master / bass" band coupling. It has an additional important feature: target-zone
gating. If the input program material's level falls within a user-settable window
(typically 3dB), then the release time slows to a user-determined level. It can be slow
enough (0.5 dB/second) to effectively freeze the operation of the AGC. This prevents
the AGC from applying additional, audible gain control to material that is already
well controlled. It also lets you run the AGC with fast release times without adding
excessive density to material that is already dense.
The AGC contains a compression ratio control that allows you to vary to ratio be-
tween 2:1 and essentially ∞:1. Lower ratios can make gain riding subtler on critical
formats like classical and jazz.
The AGC has its own silence-gating detector whose threshold can be set independ-
ently of the silence gating applied to the multiband compressor.
Equalization: OPTIMOD-PC has steep-slope bass shelving equalizer and three bands
of fully parametric bell-shaped EQ.
You can set the slope of the bass shelving EQ to 6, 12, or 18 dB/octave, adjust the
shelving frequency and set the amount of equalization.
OPTIMOD-PC's bass, midrange, and high frequency parametric equalizers have
curves that were modeled on the curves of Orban's classic analog parametrics (like
the 622B), using a sophisticated, proprietary optimization program. The curves are
matched to better than 0.15dB. This means that their sound is very close to the
sound of an Orban analog parametric. They also use very high quality filter algo-
rithms to ensure low noise and distortion.
OPTIMOD-PC HF Enhancer is a program-controlled HF shelving equalizer that intelli-
gently and continuously analyzes the ratio between broadband and HF energy in
the input program material. It can equalize excessively dull material without over-
enhancing bright material. It interacts synergistically with the five-band compressor
to produce sound that is bright and present without being excessively shrill.
Multiband Compression: The multiband compressor can be operated in five-band
or two-band mode. Several band-coupling controls allow the gain reduction of a
given band's compressor to be partially controlled by the gain reduction in its
neighboring band's compressor. These coupling controls allow anything from quasi-
wideband compression to fully independent multiband compression.
A clipper, embedded in the crossover, protects bands 1 and 2 from transient over-
shoot. This clipper has a shape control, allowing you to vary the "knee" of its in-
put/output transfer curve from hard (0) to soft (10) (see Figure 3-3 on page 3-39).