Radio-Style Presets - Orban OPTIMOD 6300 Operating Manual

OPTIMOD 6300 DIGITAL
SOFT KNEE 5B; SOFT KNEE 2B: These presets are "zeroed-out" starting points for
mastering applications, particularly where soft knee compression is desired. These
presets are not designed to be used without being manually tweaked to comple-
ment the program material being processed.
See Using the 6300 for Production and Mastering starting on page 3-65.
We strongly recommend using 6300 PC Remote to adjust these presets. Many of the
important controls (like the K
Remote and not from the 6300's front panel.
These presets are phase-linear. They set all equalization flat and turn off the AGC.
The multiband compressor (2-band or 5-band) is set to supply a very soft-knee com-
pression characteristic with approximately 5-10 dB of gain reduction. The ratio for a
given compressor starts out at 1:1 and ends up at infinity:1 when the input level is
20 dB above threshold.
Mastering engineers will certainly want to adjust the compression thresholds and
band coupling to complement the program material. The ratio and knee controls
are separately adjustable for each band's compressor. For example, one might want
to use a low ratio and soft knee in bands 1-4 while using a higher ratio and/or
harder knee in band 5 (for de-essing).
The 6300's powerful equalization section is, of course, also available. Additionally,
these presets set the look-ahead limiter drive control conservatively, which ensures
highest quality. However, the 6300's look-ahead limiter can be driven quite hard
without objectionable side effects, so the 6300 can create competitively loud mas-
ters.

Radio-Style Presets

The presets (Table 3-2 on page 3-20) have been named similarly to their radio coun-
terparts in Orban's OPTIMOD-FM 8400 and 8500. The basic audio texture of corre-
sponding 6300 and 8500 presets (heard through the 8500's digital radio output) is
similar, although the 6300 will tend to have 1-2 dB more bass. In addition, all 6300
presets have the stereo enhancer turned off to reduce potential codec stereo encod-
ing artifacts.
If you wish to reduce the bass, set the Band 1 and/or Band 2 compression
thresholds lower to taste. Then save your work as a User Preset.
The texture of the corresponding 6300 and Optimod-FM 8500 presets is quite similar,
although the 6300 presets will usually have a less restricted high frequency sound
because the 6300 performs no high frequency limiting other than that created by
gain reduction in Band 5 in the 5-band presets.
Unlike the presets in Orban's FM processors, no 6300 preset uses phase
rotation. Therefore, if you use the 6300 to process the main digital chan-
nel in HD Radio, some care must be applied in cross fading to avoid mo-
mentary audible comb filtering because of the different phase responses
and R controls) are accessible only from PC
NEE ATIO
3-19
OPERATION