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If you push the clippers very hard, then yes – 2-3dB extra mids and treble, but not really any extra bass. However, if you don’t push them too hard, the extra mids and treble will be used as headroom, for that impossibly crisp, punchy sound only BBP can provide 😉.
///Leif
The extra loudness in BBP is already there with equal settings. Also, BBP gives you 2-3dB more mids and treble — but not bass. With bass, there is truly no way to have the cake and eat it at the same time — once you have a full scale sinewave, the only way to get louder is to flatten out that sinewave, and Breakaway Live does that just as competently as Breakaway Broadcast. 🙂
///Leif
I just tested that song. There’s plenty of distortion already in the master — it falls apart every single time the kick hits.
What settings are you using?
At Plutonium with everything at default (bass normal), the bass clipper does add some harmonics (filtered distortion) to the sustained bass notes. It’s already beyond full scale low frequency sinewave, there’s just nowhere else to go. I personally didn’t find the bass harmonics at default settings objectionable, as it substantially fattens up the bass sound in small radios. Any more boost, though (if neglecting to turn down final drive to compensate) would certainly make the bass closer and closer to a (filtered) squarewave.
One way to remove most of those bass clipping harmonics on this song, while still fattening up songs with less bass, would be to load the BASS-EFX plug-in, and set BBP’s bass cut to -10 (with the plutonium preset).
Let me know if this helps 🙂
///Leif
APT-X is excellent for cascading indeed, and so is DTS (Coherent Acoustics) actually. They’re technologically related, both to each other and to MP2, by being sub-band codecs (as opposed to MDCT-codecs).
Dolby E is arguably the cleanest multi-generation lossy codec, surviving for a hundred generations (if I remember correctly). However, it’s only 4:1 compression (eight channels in a single 24-bit AES pair), and clunky — must be spliced on a video frame boundary (and there’s only 29.97 of those per second). Linear Acoustic’s e2 (e squared) system, based on Coherent Acoustics, has sold very well despite not surviving for quite that many generations — 16 channels in a single 20-bit AES pair, and if you happen to strip off the last 4 bits by feeding it through a 16-bit medium, 12 channels still remain (two 5.1 feeds)!
Oh the joys of HDTV audio.. It’s another full-time job. Radio is TRULY blessed to only have two channels to worry about.
///Leif
I see a pattern here. 🙁
Luckily, my toolbar object is only a thin "shim". At some point in the future, I’ll be able to make a 64-bit toolbar, and due to the simplicity of the toolbar itself (all the work is done by the main app), it should be possible to make the main 32-bit process talk to it.
No promises as to WHEN, though. Things have a tendency of stacking up!
///Leif
Hey, let’s not forget one important issue — compression generation-losses are additive. Encoding and re-encoding and transcoding will drastically reduce quality, even if you keep upping the bitrate for every re-encode!
Different codecs do better than others though.
MP2 (Mpeg-1 Layer 2) has much lower generation-loss than MP3 (Mpeg-1 Layer 3). I believe this is why the broadcast industry uses MP2 instead. It’s an older, simpler algorithm, yet it can achieve true transparency, while MP3 cannot. Something is always lost with MP3, due to the way the filterbanks work, even at 320kbps. (It’s not a question of running out of bits.)
What formats do compressed STLs usually use? MP2, right?
///Leif
Erwin, http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/146317 🙂
///Leif
I can, but I’m not sure how helpful it’ll be 🙂.
The Clunk control, when cranked up, adds a sort of "clunk" sound to for example snare drum transients. It’s done through phase rotation — so it keeps the energy constant but DECREASES the peak level.. Thus, less clipping, and more of the original transient gets through. It takes affect somewhere in the midrange area.
The Slam control is similar, but affects the bass area, and adds a "slam" sound to kick drums.
I’m not sure how much better I can explain it.. The ears are the best judge. Play something peaky! Fleetwood Mac – Dreams is a track I often use for this sort of experiment.
Best,
///LeifHi Stuart!
The CPU requirements of Live *should* be virtually identical to Personal. In the default configuration, the only thing (algorithm wise) Live has that Personal doesn’t have, is the 30hz high pass filter.
What input / output settings are you using?
Good catch about the tooltips — I’ve forgotten to update them.
Good point about the volume control! It would make a lot of sense to give power users the option of using Live conveniently, as opposed to Personal — there are quite a few things Live can do that Personal can’t. I’ll see about adding it back in for the next version. I’ve also been meaning to add the toolbar — Breakaway Broadcast has that already, but I didn’t have time to do it for Live before my vacation, and then I forgot about it.
I guess I have quite a few things to add to Live. 😉
///Leif
And even better, when it works in Windows 7, it’s actually transparent, unlike in Vista where adding the Breakaway Toolbar makes the entire taskbar opaque (due to the breakaway toolbar not supporting the transparent toolbar interface).. I guess that means I don’t have to do that, then 😀. Thanks, Microsoft!
Regarding 32 vs 64, I will ask my friend which one he’s running. It’s very possible that he’s using the 32 bit version, and it COULD be that 64-bit explorer doesn’t support 32-bit toolbars — although it would surprise me a bit.
///Leif
See, that’s the beauty of digital processing.. It’s just math. It doesn’t matter what cpu, dsp or operating system.. they will all calculate the math the same way (early pentiums being a notable exception).. it’s ALL about the algorithm.
Thanks, Sgeirk. Always great to hear from you! 🙂.
///Leif
DSP_PhaseTornado will definitely make it NOT sound like an 8100 — they’ve never had those kind of phase problems. Bob Orban actually knows what he’s doing — he’d never release a processor sounding like that. 🙂
Impact/Clunk, on the other hand, would be a better choice.
Erwin, the red flashing is not good. Load the 6dB attenuator, as the first plug-in in the chain. This takes care of it.
///Leif
How to load DSP plug-ins in BBP and Live:
In the I/O Configuration, enable "Effects". Then, in the settings window, you will see controls for Effect Plug-ins. Press the "Edit" button to open the window where you select plug-ins. After you’re finished, press OK to save the settings, and then press "Reload" to load the plug-ins you selected. Finally, press "Config" to change plug-in settings, for the plug-ins that have settings.
///Leif
