Digital Audio and Broadcast

Why shouldn’t I just hang a cheap analogue general-purpose compressor-limiter on my programme output and leave it at that?

General purpose compressor-limiters have three main flaws for professional programme levelling and protection limiting:

• Their audible effect on the programme level is almost always ineffective and inconsistent; for example failing to bring up low-level passages adequately; in some cases audibly ramping the gain; continuously pumping and clipping when the desk output gets too high.  Their ‘sweet spot’ is just not big enough to take account of typical programme dynamics!
• They are not suitable for direct integration into a digital plant, for both obvious and subtle reasons.  Obviously, they often will not have the correct interfaces for plugging into the digital plant in the first place, necessitating outboard converters.  On a more subtle level, they almost always employ brute-force clippers as part of the peak limiter: when this clipped signal is digitised, supersonic clipping products may give rise to unpleasant aliasing and / or digital overloads; in short, poor quality sound.
• Such devices can’t have their controls locked out!  This leaves even a carefully arrived-at compromise setting prone to accidental change or unauthorised tampering.

 ALPS, on the other hand:

• Uses carefully integrated processing blocks to deliver powerful yet unobtrusive level control.
• Is designed for digital from the ground up, with all the right interfaces built-in, correct limiting algorithms for perfect sound, and no compromises due to conversion issues…
• Can be set up easily and then locked; for consistently excellent results, month after month, year after year.

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