Hey crew,
Can anyone give me a succinct definition of Early-Out and a basic technical breakdown of what it is doing in a sonic sense? I mean, I can HEAR what it is doing to the output, but what is the mechanism? I am a big fan of using it to lift things in and out of the mix or to create a more live feel but I really couldn't explain to someone how it does that or what it is doing.
Thanks in advance for any insight.
-Russ
Early-Out is when you behave extra good and get let out of School earlier than the other kids.
The mechanism is called a door.
Never heard of that term in my 35+ year pro sound tenure, but I started on reel-to-reel so what do I know. A half-day of school is what I would associate it with as well.
Now I got out of School early I had to time to nose around a bit, I think SamuraiOne is referring to the "Early out" slider in the Sony 'Reverb' audio plugin - as the Help menu says, quite succinctly:
"Choose an Early reflection style from the drop-down list, and drag the Early out slider to adjust the early reflections mixed into the output. Early reflections are the first reflections you hear when a sound is created in a space. These reflections have typically only bounced once before reaching your ears. The human ear uses these first reflections to judge the size of the space."
Generally, early reflections in Reverbs are effectively groups of delays scattered between a few milliseconds and around 35 milliseconds - any longer and they are perceived as (possibly annoying) echos.
"Early reflections" is a familiar term for audio folks. Perhaps 'Early out' was a leftover from the early days. As I recall, Sound Forge 3.0 (Sonic Foundry) used 'non-audio' (bizarre) terminology for parameter adjustments.