Contour Edit Screen

Contour Edit screen

Note: The Dynamics Contour Edit screen is accessed by double-clicking on any of the three bands found at the bottom of the main Final Mix screen.

Overview

The Contour Edit Screen allows you to have very powerful control over the heart of Final Mix. Double-clicking on any of the three dynamics overview screens brings up this more detailed screen. The overview screens are found at the bottom of the main screen. The graph you see when first accessing this screen represents the dynamics contour for the currently selected band. This graph shows the band input level (on the horizontal) vs. what the output level will be (on the vertical) after passing through the dynamics processor.

The threshold is shown as the white line with the “T” node attached. The graph also shows the contour’s moveable end point (designated by the green node, labeled “E”). The end point represents a selected band’s maximum output level. The traditional Compression Ratio is affected by both of these parameters. One of the very powerful features of Final Mix is that you can set up your contour to have different compression ratios for different input levels. This is achieved by using multiple nodes. The figure above shows 2 extra nodes – the red balls labeled 1 and 2. These nodes are being used, in this case, to essentially draw a knee for the compressor curve. This gives a nice smooth transition from applying minimal compression at low input levels, to much higher compression at higher levels.

The red line that crosses the graph diagonally represents unity gain (i.e., the signal is unaffected by the dynamics processor). Contours which are steeper than this, as illustrated below by the segment between T and 1, represent expansion.

14

User’s Guide

Expansion section