Orban OPTIMOD-AM 9300 Operating Manual Download

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OPERATION

ORBAN MODEL 9300

formats. This is the sound texture for the station that values a clean, easy-
to-listen-to sound with a tasteful amount of punch, presence, and
brightness added when appropriate. This is an unprocessed sound that
sounds just right on music and voice when listened to on small table ra-
dios, car radios, portables, or home hi-fi systems.

The

Medium Fast

settings (

MFAST

and

MFAST2

) are ideal for a highly

competitive Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) format whose ratings depend
on attracting a large number of listeners (high “cume”) but which does
not assume that a listener will listen to the station for hours at a time.
This is the major market competitive sound, emphasizing loudness as well
as clean audio. The sound from cut to cut and announcer to announcer is
remarkably consistent as the texture of music is noticeably altered to a
standard. Bass has an ever-present punch, there is always a sense of pres-
ence, and highs are in perfect balance to the mids, no matter what was
on the original recording.

The

Fast

setting is used for the

TALK

and

SPORTS

factory programming

formats. Processing for this sound keeps the levels of announcers and
guests consistent, pulls low-grade telephone calls out of the mud, and
keeps a proper balance between voice and commercials. Voice is the most
difficult audio to process, but these settings result in a favorable trade-
off between consistency, presence, and distortion.

It is possible to experiment with this sound for music-oriented program-
ming as well. However, even with these settings, your sound is getting
farther away from the balance and texture of the input. We think that
this is as far as processing can go without causing unacceptable listener
fatigue. However, this sound may be quite useful for stations that are or-
dinarily heard very softly in the background because it improves intelligi-
bility under these quiet listening conditions. Stations that are ordinarily
played louder will probably prefer one of the slower release times, where
the multiband compressor takes more gain reduction and where the AGC
is operated slowly for gentle gain riding only. These slower sounds are
less consistent than those produced by the

FAST

setting. Using

SLOW

preserves more of the source’s frequency balance, making the sound less
dense and fatiguing when the radio is played loudly.

Bx THR

(“Band x Compression Threshold”) controls set the compression threshold in

each band, in units of dB below the final clipper threshold. We recommend making
only small changes around the factory settings to avoid changing the range over
which the

CLIPPING

control operates. These controls will affect the spectral bal-

ance of the processing above threshold, but are also risky because they can strongly
affect the amount of distortion produced by the back-end clipping system.

MB GATE

(“Multiband Gate Threshold”) control determines the lowest input level

that will be recognized as program by OPTIMOD-AM; lower levels are considered to
be noise or background sounds and cause the AGC or multiband compressor to gate,
effectively freezing gain to prevent noise breathing.

There are two gating circuits in the 9300. The first affects the AGC and the second
affects the multiband compressor. Each has its own threshold control. The 9300’s in-