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THE BLOCKS
Hold
Is the time that the Expander/Gate will keep the Ratio at 1:1 below the threshold, before the Release time sets in.
Release
The Release time is the fallback time that the Expander/Gate uses to reach the gain reduction specified by the Ratio parameter.
Example: If the input signal suddenly drops 4 dB below threshold in no time with the Ratio set to 1:4 and the Release set to 20 ms, the Gold Channel will use 20 ms to reach a gain reduction of 12 dB.
Knee Mode
The Knee Mode parameter sets the bending point of the Expander to soft knee or hard knee. When soft knee is selected, the Expander will gradually reach the ratio, while hard knee will cause the Expander to go directly from no expansion to the current ratio.
Max. Damping
With this parameter you can decide the maximum numbers of dB the expansion shall attenuate (See the graphics to get a better understanding).
SIDECHAIN
The Sidechain is the reference signal that the Expander is listening to internally to carry out the processing. You will never hear this signal on the output. The Advanced Expander has a separate bandpass filter for tweaking the sidechain signal, and you can give it another input signal.
Filter
Turns the Sidechain bandpass filter on/off. The bandpass filter attenuates low and high frequencies, from the Freq and Bandwidth parameter settings by
Freq
Sets the center frequency of the Sidechain bandpass filter.
Bandwidth
Sets the Bandwidth of the Sidechain bandpass filter.
Monitor
Here you can monitor the Sidechain signal, which is very useful for getting the right settings of the Sidechain filter.
Input
When placed on Channel 1, you can select the Sidechain Input to be either the Same (Ch.1) or Channel 2.
Example: If you select to have Sidechain input from Ch.2, you can go to the Layout page and select Ch. 1 Pre, as input to Ch.2. Now you have all the blocks on Ch. 2 for processing the Sidechain signal on Ch. 1. You can also have a completely different input on Ch. 2.
NOTE: When two blocks are linked, you cannot select Ch. 2 as input for Ch. 1 Sidechain.
Compressor
There are two types of compressors in the Gold Channel. They use two different algorithms that make them perform in two very different ways. When we made these compressors, we listened to the characteristics in some of the old compressors that are very popular in recording studios today, and tried to put some of their characteristics into our compressors.
A Compressor is meant to reduce the dynamic content of the input signal, and thereby keep a more constant level. When the input signal exceeds the threshold, the Compressor starts to reduce the signal according to the Ratio. The Ratio describes how much the signal is reduced, e.g. a Ratio at 2:1 means that for every 2 dB the signal exceeds the threshold, only 1dB comes out.
Compressor
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