TC Electronic Finalizer Express

Straightforward to use. Easy to improve the sound of your mix.

Splits signal into highs, mids, and lows, then compresses each one independently. Is effective. Moderately noisy, but could be worse. Fairly transparent.

Unit quit working in less than a year of light use. Never taken out of my climate controlled home studio. Probably used less than 10 times.

Customer support? What customer support? They don't answer their phones, at all, period. Someone may, or may not, respond to voice mails a few days later. Don't even waste your time sending them e-mails because all you get back is an auto response that it not helpful. Finally had to get unit repaired by a local independent.

I record original material in a home studio. Wide variety of music. Been playing for 30 years. Studio is based around a Tascam 16 track 1" analog recorder and Tascam M3700 32 channel automated console. From there I go to a Tascam BR-20, which is a broadcast quality 2 track analog deck. Got this TC Electronic unit to do a kind of home studio version of "mastering". Worked pretty well; stabilized the meters well, didn't color the sound very much.

Just use your loaf and go

It fattens my sound and it makes a cheap PA sound almost like a large Mackie system

No probs yet

Not yet needed so don't know

I use this live and straigh out of my desk. The only thing I don't like is the soft clip. (Don't use it for live work).
This unit has been side by side with a pro band set up and it stood up well. The pro PA was about ??5000 worth and mine is ??500 worth

As a owner of a commercial recording facility I have found this unit to be of great value.To get a great sound out of it is easy great on vocals and other instruments.
The editing patches were so simple a two year old child could do it.
In my view manuals are totally useless in this game,setting the unit up and away you go.

Our setup is a Soundtracs JADE and Tascam DA-38 (16 tracks)this unit goes well with all of our gear.
The finalizer is so quiet and very user friendly.THe effects sound great at all times.
We also use this unit for our professional remastering section and its a great unit.

The finalizer in our studio has been pushed to its full limits and still keeps on going.I would not use this unit on a gig reason being we look after our gear venues are not the place for great units like this.

Customer support is great.

We record all types of music and the finalizer is a great match for all types of music.Compared to other units TC are nearly the best.

The controls are very straight foward and I love the knobs. On the face of the Finalizer it seems very easy to operate... however beware! It is extreemly tricky to use - mainly because it is powerful and can be easily over done.

Main thing I have struggled with is the gain structure which makes a HUGE difference when it comes to the compression applied and the overall EQ effects. I recently switched from alalog to digital input and it completely changed the way this unit sounds. Again, mainly because of how tricky it is to get the right balance between the gain into the unit and what comes out.

So ease of use is a qualified 7 - easy does it.

Excellent for the money. When used properly it will help balance your mixes and add a more competitive overall perceived volume to the mix.

Warning - this is not really a true substitution for professional mastering. Also, don't use the Finalizer on mixes that will be professionally mastered because you will really limit what the mastering engineer can do.

So for sound quality I'd give this unit a 7.

So far bulletproof.

Because much of what goes out on my studio is not mastered (I do a lot of tv, video, radio production music), this unit is essential to my work. My clients almost never complain about my end product since I got the Finalizer three years ago.

Again - I would not put out an album using this unit as the masting tool. It's not up to a true professional mastering job. But for what it is - it does the job well!

Generally gets a great sound though the gain structure can get a bit tricky. I tend to lean on soft clipping to avoid digital overs. Thank you so much for the easy user interface. I'm getting to really hate menues. This unit is "knob per function". I can't ask for better.

I run a small 32 track studio with 4 DA88/38s and a Mackie 32 x 8. My mixes have been satisfying local musicians for quite sometime but now I have one more service to offer. One that makes a profound difference particularly with playback level, punch and clarity.

I have had it for just under a year and it is still like new and with out a flaw. I sure hope it stays that way.

no interaction

I do recording for a host of styles from hardcore to polka. It seems to help in all cases, particularly with playback level.

I could train a chimp to use the 5x5 compression grid. I love it, it's great for live PA work, where you want to adjust the compression and attack/release times on the fly without mucking with menus and parameters. The only consideration is that you MUST NOT OVERUSE IT.

Clean sound. It does maximize your mix and provide a nice punchier sound. For those who claim that it muddies your mixes, I would suggest that mastering only increases your mix - if it's a muddy mix in the first place, you'll only get muddier. If it's a pristine mix, it will just get sweeter. Mastering only highlights whats already there - garbage in, garbage out.

I use this live as a master insert effect in my mixer. I do electronic music, and I needed a hardware unit for live work - and this is the ONLY (AGAIN, THE ONLY) mastering processer I would take on a stage, for ease of use (see above) primarily - BUT, bear in mind I do trust the final signal through it, and so far it's been functional - even in sweaty venues with those horrible smog machines...

For mastering in a live environment, nothing else will do. period. It's also one of the cheaper mastering processors out there, with digital ins n' outs, a definite plus when I tote it back to the studio.

This box gives you new ways to get it right, and new ways to screw up. Ultimately, it's no less work, but you can get a better result. It does have a significant learning curve.

It's easy to over-compress using the preset positions. It will definitely add apparent loudness! For my ears, the preset center positions pull down the bass too much and boost the mid too much, but that can be adjusted. Set correctly, it can sound very professional.

Went on the fritz, but TCE repaired it quickly.

Repaired unit and returned it quickly.

You can get very professional sounding results with this, but you can also get over-compressed crap. I was hoping I could give my ears a break and just push a button--nope. I end up using my ears more, but for better results. -1 point for the high price.

Model is very easy to use. The settings are all there from manufacturer. Manual is pretty good. Gives you good starting points.

I would have to rate this unit far below average! I paid $1,000 US for it and muddies my mixes. It adds no gain - levels are NOT comparable to professional CD's. I couldn't see any more clarity. Save your money and buy software to do the job instead. Waves L-1 DESTROYS this unit for a third of the price. This unit really doesn't do what it's supposed to. When I played unmastered mixes for friends (non-musician/engineers) and Finalized mixes - they couldn't tell the difference! The only difference I could see was a a little (and I stress LITTLE) warmth/slightly better bottom end sound. I can't actually say the unit "sounds terrible" and rate it a 1 - however, it really doesn't do what the advertising says.

I have only owned the unit for 5 months and I don't know how reliable it is. Hopefully I won't find out either.... I'm selling it!

Customer support is excellent at this company. Someone called me to tell me the serial number was missing a digit on the warranty card. I also emailed TC to ask about uses for this product and they responded immediately and were very courteous.

I would not recommend buying this unit. It is very expensive - doesn't do anything compared to Waves and T.C. Works software. I guess if you don't have any money and you pick one up for free it's better than nothing!

I had no luck getting a good sound out of this unit. The manual was adequate, but not exceptional. It was fairly easy to figure out, however.

I wanted this for mastering CDs in my home studio. It promised to tighten up and add punch and clarity to my mixes. It was the exact opposite. The mixes sounded WORSE not matter how I used it, via factory pre-sets or my own set-ups. Very muddy sounding.

No opinion, I took the unit back after two days.

The customer support was great. I called the company twice and spoke with a gentleman named Klaus. He was friendly and knowlegable. It's too bad the product was so disappointing.

This thing was a complete disappointment. All hype and no help. It can ruin any mix. It was impossible to get any gain out of it as well, regardless if you came out digitally or analog, and clipped way too easlily. My mixes sound better without it. I have also used the DBX DDP, and it was a better unit at about half the price.

Really easy handling. Choose from one of the presets and let this
unit do the rest. The manual is ok but a bit short.

I`m using it in my homerecording studio as a mastering tool between
my Mackie 1202 and a hardware CD-R recorder using some AkaiS6000 & 5000 Samplers and a few "older" Roland S-760 Sampler. No noise at all
from this unit - sound is excellent. It really makes my music
"ready for radio".

no problems until now (I`m owning this for 2 month right now)

never dealt with them

I`m doing filmmusic and classical scoring. If this unit would be stolen I`d immediately go for it again. I just love the easy handling
and the great multiband enhancers / compressors.