elysia alpha compressor - Manual (Page 19)

19
Soft Clip
Gain Reduction
M/S Mode Active Channel Link
Mix Gain
EQ Freq
Hz
SC Gain
dB
SC Freq EQ Gain
Auto Fast Feed Forward
On
Auto Fast
x10 On
Transformer Direct Compressed On
Thresh Attack Release Ratio
Soft Clip Mix Gain
EQ Freq SC Gain
dB
EQ Gain
Auto Fast Feed Forward
On
Auto Fast
x10 On
Transformer Direct Compressed On
Thresh Attack
ms
Release
ms
Ratio
1:X
Soft Clip
SC Freq
Soft Clip Limiter
The Soft Clipper was designed to limit short, loud transients to prevent subsequent A/D converters
from clipping. However, the circuit does not behave like a classic brick wall limiter, but more like an
analog tape machine driven into saturation: it rounds the peaks instead of making hard cuts.
The Soft Clip modules are placed directly in front of the output stages. Their settings are not influ-
enced by the mix and gain controllers. This is also the case in M/S mode, because the limiters are
located after the M/S decoder and therefore are always assigned to the left and right stereo chan-
nels. Note that the channel link does not affect the circuit either – because of this the settings of
the Soft Clip controllers for both channels should always be identical!
If the alpha compressor is the last unit in the signal path before the A/D converter, it is only once
that the setting of the Soft Clip limiter has to be adapted to the converter. It is best to use a fast,
sample-accurate PPM meter to find the right setting, because it is an accurate method of bench-
marking the resulting change in level.
The Soft Clip LEDs located on top of the gain reduction meters should only light up shortly, as
noticeable distortion appears if you drive this circuit too hard. Particularly with regard to acoustic
and classical music, this feature should be used with care and moderate settings only.
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Left
Input
Soft Clip
Limiter
Left
Output
Right
Input
Soft Clip
Limiter
Right
Output