Crane Song Falcon 500 series Compressor
FALCON features 3 attack and 3 release time settings, hard and soft knee choices for compression or limiting, two different audio path sounds, wet-dry mixing for parallel compression, and is linkable.
The audio path color is changed by modifying the tube circuit so it has negative feedback or does not have negative feedback. This along with the optical like quality of the compressor allows for a colored vintage sound or a much cleaner sound with optical characteristics.
When linked the master unit controls all functions on the slave except for wet-dry and make up gain. The link system is capable of doing 5.1
THE CONTROLS
- ATTACK SWITCH: A three position switch with fast, medium and slow settings, which controls the time it takes Falcon to respond to the input signal. Fast is the top position
- RELEASE SWITCH: This switch controls the time it takes Falcon to return to no gain reduction. It is a three position switch with fast, medium and slow settings. Fast is the top position. The release time is also determined by the program material. This is the optical time constant effect. Sometimes called auto release or program dependent release.
- METER SWITCH: Allows monitoring the output level or gain reduction.
- LIMIT-COMPRESS: This switch changes the knee shape from a soft knee to a hard knee for limiter operation
- COLOR SWITCH: In the top or the “100” position the tube circuit is operated with no negative feedback for an extremely rich sound, In the lower position the tube has negative feedback. This gives the user color choices
- WET-DRY: This is the mix between the original signal and the processed audio. When in link mode the WET-DRY controls operate independently.
- BYPASS SWITCH: This is a three position switch. In the bypass position, (the bottom position), Falcon is removed from the audio path.
- In the IN position (The middle position) Falcon is switched into the audio path.
- In the LINK (or top) position, the link signals are connected between the channels. The link cable is a special cable, (supplied by Crane Song). This allows master slave operation and does not use the 500 series rack interconnect. The LINK light will be brighter on the master unit, dimmer on the slave unit and off when there are no linked channels.
- All units must be in the bypass mode for the link to be engaged. If any units are switch to IN or LINK, LINK will be disallowed. This mode of operation allows the LINK switch on the master unit to put all channels into bypass with one switch
- To set the LINK mode, set all channels to BYPASS, set the switch on the desired master channel to link. The LEDs will show the status of linking In link mode: ATTACK, RELEASE, METER SWITCH, COLOR SWITCH, and THRESHOLD controls are controlled on the master channel
- THRESHOLD: The threshold control governs the amount of gain reduction.
- GAIN: The gain control will adjust the compressor gain from off to +15 dB of gain. When linked the gain controls operate independently.