Drawmer MX60 Pro Front End One - Manual (Page 5)

A conventional de-esser can be set up by introducing equalisation into the
side-chain of a compressor and adjusting the equaliser so that the signal is
boosted in the area of the spectrum where sibilant sounds occur, forcing the
compressor to react more to high frequency sibilant sounds than to general
speech frequencies. This is less than ideal because the whole signal drops in
level whenever a sibilant sound occurs, which can result in the vocal taking on an
unnatural lisping characteristic. The MX60 de-esser is almost completely
automatic requiring the user only to select a male or female setting and to adjust
the amount of de-essing taking place. Only that part of the spectrum containing
sibilant sounds is subjected to gain reduction so that the lisping effect of simpler
de-essers is avoided.
Equalisation is provided after compression so that tonal changes can be made
without affecting the compressor action. The MX60 has a powerful three-band
equaliser that features shelving high and low sections in conjunction with a fully
parametric mid-range section.
The Tubesound section, is based around low noise solid-state circuitry designed
to emulate the overdrive characteristics of vacuum tubes. Here the signal is split
into three frequency bands and each band is provided with a variable drive
control. Increasing the drive level increases both the level and harmonic content
of the relevant band, and at low drive settings, it's possible to emulate the
characteristics of a tube microphone, to add HF enhancement or to warm up the
lower octaves. Higher settings may be used to create more obvious distortion
effects on voices or instruments.
At the end of the signal path is a fixed threshold limiter which comes prior to the
output level control (Master Fader). The limiter has a fixed preset threshold of
+20dBu and the Master fader scales the signal level down to the required level.
A hard limit LED indicates the onset of limiting. The soft limit LED indicates a
level 6dB below the main limiter, where progressive rounding of signal peaks
occurs prior to the onset of hard limiting.
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