In article ,
Bill Thompson wrote:

When the Optimod came out the station I worked for was told by our
consultants (UGH) to switch from the DAP to the Optimod, and the owner
agreed. The other engineers and I were, needless to say, a little
miffed, and we didn't spend a lot of time learning how to use the
Optimod, and it sounded, predictably, pretty darned bad.

I assume you are talking about the Optimod 8000. There is an interesting
history behind the 8000, which as crude as it is now by today's
standards, was revolutionary in its day. When Bob brought his Moduline
box prototype of the 8000 by my station and we put it on the air in 1974
(the first time an Optimod 8000 ever saw the light of day on the air, by
the way), I was blown away. I had never before seen (or heard) any
processor that had such tight modulation control on ALL program
material, while sounding relatively open with remarkably
natural-sounding high frequencies.

Then the college station where I worked got an Optimod, and for whatever
reason, I spent about a month playing with it before I put it on the
air. This was before the internet, but I called Orban, and Mr. Orban
himself spent quite a bit of time walking me through his design
objectives, and a whole lotta other info. (Thanks Mr. Orban!!!).

The 8000 was designed solely and exclusively by Bob himself. It was not
a collaboration with anyone. It was created as the result of badgering
by some of his friends who happened to be broadcast engineers who
insisted that he apply his considerable design skills to solve the
problem of modulation control on FM. Bob personally walked you through
it because, frankly, he was the only one who knew how it worked at what
became Orban Associates.

Then along came the composite clipper, and this time we spent some time
learning about it before we used it, and while it was audible, we did
manage to avoid over-using it.

I experimented with composite clipping just before the 8000 came to
pass. I (and others) insisted to Bob that there had to be a better way.
But that was well before it was perverted into a processing technique. I
simply used it to shave off the overshoots caused by passing square
waves into low-pass filters for modulation control, not to smash the
audio into it to make it louder.

--
John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS
+1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407