General processing advice, Know your goals, Tweaking and fiddling – Omnia Audio Omnia.9/XE User Manual

Page 5: Choosing a preset

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General Processing Advice

Know Your Goals

The first step to successful processing – and this applies to ANY processor, not just Omnia.9/XE - is
defining your goals. Whatever those goals are, Omnia.9/XE is capable of getting you there.

You may wish to maintain as much quality as possible while increasing loudness somewhat over your
existing processor. Or you might want to create very consistent source-to-source spectral balance and
develop a “signature sound” for your station.. In any case, it is best to start with a goal in mind and work
toward it carefully and deliberately.

Tweaking and Fiddling

One big temptation when installing a new processor is fiddling with every available control, and there is
no shortage of those in Omnia.9/XE! There’s really no better way to find out what each control does, but
experimentation and exploration are probably best done “on the bench” as it were before you put your
new acquisition on the air. That way, you’re free to tweak away without having to worry about jeopardizing
your on-air sound or being unnecessarily timid about making adjustments because you don’t know what
affect they will have.

Another suggestion for getting to know your way around Omnia.9/XE is to find a factory preset that you
like and then go exploring in the various menus to see how that sound was achieved. For example, let’s
say you find a preset with a smooth, open sound which matches your general processing goal. As you
explore, you might find some controls set as you would expect to deliver that sound, but you may also
find some unexpected settings that make more creative use of Omnia.9/XE’s controls. There is much to
be learned by studying.

Once you are comfortable with navigating through Omnia.9/XE’s menus and have a good understanding
of how its controls operate, you’re ready to take it for a live test drive.

Choosing a Preset

Regardless of whether you end up using a supplied preset “as-is” or make adjustments to customize your
sound, you must start with one of the factory presets. We recommend you find one that most closely
matches your goals and then make any modifications from there as needed.

Most processors use radio format names to try and define their sound but then go on to explain there’s no
reason a rock station shouldn’t try out the “Country” preset – which is very true. As a rule, Omnia.9 takes
a deliberately different approach and most of its presets don’t give you any hint as to who should use
them (or how) in the hopes that you’ll “step out of your box” a bit and explore.

If your Country station sounds great on the air with settings that might mimic an “Urban” preset - with a
slamming low end and a nice open mid-range – the last thing we want to do is make you second guess
yourself because the preset name doesn’t match.

General Processing Advice

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