SILVER Audio Processor 4Bmini User’s manual
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Audemat-Aztec SA – Audemat-Aztec INC
web: www.audemat-aztec.com - e-mail: contact@audemat-aztec.com
Great care is needed in setting the final clipper drive control. This control needs to be adjusted carefully and only you
can make the decision on the balance between loudness and quality. As you increase the drive you will obviously
obtain more loudness but at the expense of distortion. There is a fine line between artistic distortion and distortion
that your listeners will find uncomfortable to listen to, especially for extended periods of time.
The final clipper now has an additional control to help reduce IMD distortion. This clipper hardness control is an
additional program dependent mechanism that helps to reduce distortion by analysing the level of IMD distortion and
dynamically adjusting time constants. The control is subtle and its range has been limited to restrict the amount of
control, preventing pumping and a loss of loudness which would undo what we want to use the clipper for which is
gaining loudness.
You may not notice the effect of this control on all program material. When adjusting the clipper hardness control we
recommend that you turn the final clipper drive up past the point that you have it set at. This will make the effect of
the hardness control much more obvious and allow you to find the setting that sounds best for your format. Once the
clipper hardness control is set you can back down the final clipper drive to the point that sounds best knowing that the
clipper hardness control has been set correctly to help keep the distortion down on difficult program material.
There's also an overshoot control for the clipper. Setting this control to lower numbers allows more overshoots
through to the composite clipper which trades off main clipper distortion for composite clipper distortion. Composite
clipper distortion can sound a touch nicer albeit at the expense of slight contamination of the output spectrum.
Composite clipper
The composite clipper in the SILVER Audio Processor 4Bmini's stereo encoder is highly over-sampled and allows
you to gain an extra dB or two of modulation loudness when using the multiplex output to drive your FM transmitter.
The range of the composite clipper is -0.5 to 2dB.
Here at AUDEMAT-AZTEC we prefer to use the final clipper to generate the required amount of loudness because
composite clipping introduces stereo crosstalk. When we do use the composite clipper we prefer to use small
amounts of no more than 1dB.
Auditioning individual stages of the SILVER Audio Processor 4Bmini processing
When setting up the SILVER Audio Processor 4Bmini it is sometimes useful to hear the effects of the adjustments on
that particular processing stage. By setting the other processing blocks up in a certain way you can make it easier to
hear the effects of the one you are adjusting.
For example, to listen to just the action of the multi-band limiters bypass the AGC stage and back down the multi-
band and final clipper drives. To hear just the clippers do the same back the drive down into the limiters to -6dB. You
can then up the drive into the clippers with the clipper drive controls and mixer controls to here just the clippers
working.
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