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No problem. I’ll pass along the thanks to Keith 🙂. He handles all the support, authorizations and lots of other responsibilities.
///Leif
I do hear 30 hz.. Down to about 25, actually. I say this with confidence, because 25hz still sounds like a musical note.
The last time I tested this was when building the stereo system in my 2001 Chrysler Concorde a few years back.
The subwoofer consisted of four 12" rockford-fosgate subwoofers, isobarically mounted (clam-shell) in two pairs, in a three chamber ported enclosure. The box took more than half of the huge trunk, and consisted of two separate enclosures (ported towards the center chamber, ports tuned to 21hz) with one end of the center chamber having a big hole, lined up with the ski-hole in the back seat. I used a rockford fosgate class D amplifier (1500 W according to the box, probably at least 1000W RMS in reality).
This sub played down to 21 Hz, with resonance at 28. It’s the deepest, cleanest bass I have ever heard from a car 🙂.
Here’s some photos: http://leif.cx/photos/concorde/
Of course, even with this setup, it was rather disappointing how few songs make use of it. Having 30hz bass notes is extremely satisfying when you have a system that can produce it. Booty bass, contrary to popular believe, doesn’t really go below 50. Remember, it’s designed to be played loud through cheap band-pass enclosures, with underpowered amplifiers 😉.
Anyway, I figure, if I can, elephants probably can too. Don’t they have infrasonic mating calls?
///Leif
Hi Maniak!
When you connect your USB headset, I believe Windows changes the default sound device to the headset behind your back. I wonder if there’s a way to stop Windows from doing that.. Anyone have any ideas? 🙂
Hibernate is a known problem — I’ve attempted to fix it but so far been unsuccessful, and I may need to take a completely new approach. I will look into it.
User-definable hot-keys are an excellent idea! Sounds like it’s a necessary feature — I will try to implement it.
///Leif
Hi gaicccp!
I agree that totalrecorder would not be a good long-term solution.
I get requests for some kind of disk writing function or a winamp plugin once in a while, but it seems like it would be a very low-volume product, which in turn means that it’s hard to justify taking time away from higher-volume products. I’m only one guy, so I have to manage my time as efficiently as I can.
That being said, it’s not impossible that there will be one in the future — but I’m afraid I can’t say when. 🙁
///Leif
This is an excellent idea!
I really need to start thinking about adding assignable hot-key support to Breakaway.
///Leif
Thank you, Sparky!
EXCELLENT explanation.
I’d also like to add a 4th point:
Even though our ears can hear down to 20hz, sensitivity decreases with frequency. Very few systems can produce it (most subwoofers do not go much below 40), and the vast majority of music — even booty bass — does not go below 40 for this reason alone. Why put the audio in if it won’t be heard? 30 is an extremely low frequency, and already requires a tremendous amount of amplitude to be audible. Going below this, we’d be wasting modulation on something that will not be audible at all for most listeners, limiting our maximum volume and adding distortion.
Sort of off-topic, but I believe the whole fallacy is rooted in our tendency to fixate on numbers. Does it do 20-20000hz? Is the processing 24-bit? How can a modern 1.6 GHz Celeron be faster than a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4?
Numbers are easily quantifiable, but reality is just not that simple.For example, it would be perfectly possible to have a 192 kHz audio processor with 24-bit resolution and 5 – 40000hz frequency response, sound absolutely awful. The numbers simply measure specific parts of the processing, but in the grand scheme of things they are basically meaningless.
People generally do not understand just how much dynamic range 16-bits really is. In a properly dithered 16-bit signal, the noise floor (as viewed on a spectrum analyzer) is at -120dB. A single sinewave at full scale will read at 0dB, and a squarewave will read 2.1dB. That’s over 120dB of dynamic range!
So, how much is 120dB? Actually, it comes out to a gain of over one million. After recording the strongest sound possible in 16-bit, you can attenuate it by a factor of a million before it drowns in noise. Concerto for pin-drop and air horn? No problem!
Regarding sampling rates:
44100hz is enough to *accurately* reproduce any waveform 20-20000hz, and even a little above, depending on what filter is used. Amplitude, and phase will all be completely accurate within this band. It does not matter that the playing connect-the-dots on the sampled audio looks nothing like the original waveform — it’s the reconstructed waveform (after upsampling or D/A conversion) that matters.
If we make the comparison to 192000hz/24-bit (DVD-Audio maximum quality).. Let’s say we start with a full scale 400hz tone, but add a tiny bit of clipping somewhere in the chain. Let’s say 1 percent overload.. This adds distortion sideband up to -60dB! This single percent could be argued to have degraded our 24-bit audio to nearly 8-bit resolution. All it takes is a tiny little mistake like this, to completely undo any perceivable benefit of the higher resolution. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to spend the available finite resources on better algorithms for the lower resolution audio, instead of wasting it where it does not make an improvement?
In short, I’ll take well made 44100hz/16-bit (CD quality) over poorly made 192000hz/24-bit, any day.
Also, for those who still want frequency response below 30hz, the high pass filter does have an off-switch. 🙂
///Leif
Hi Arieli!
I’ve just started creating it, I should have a beta in a few weeks.
There will be a multiple instance version, where you can simply run multiple copies, and you can create as many pipelines as you need to feed the audio into each instance. Breakaway Live will have DSP plug-in support just like Breakaway Broadcast, so you’ll be able to call encoder plug-ins from each instance.
///Leif
Hi Arieli!
Breakaway Live will be able to do it. I hadn’t planned for more than 4 instances, but I suppose I could do 8. 🙂
///Leif
Whoa!
Please accept my sincere apologies, JJ — I have no idea how that could have happened. We usually send out keys within 24 hours!
What is your name, or your order number? I will follow up on this right away, but I have to know where to look.
Best regards,
Leif ClaessonHi Maniak!
*Very* strange that the volume up/down keys control the sound card volume even though Pipeline is the default output device!
I have no explanation for this — it should be impossible.
Do the volume up/down keys also control the pipeline volume?
It is normal that changing the sound card output volume affects volume. The sound card is *after* Breakaway, so any change there will affect the audio.
///Leif
I understand. I’m still waiting for actual audio examples so I can see what’s going on. What I’ll need is a recording of the input to BBP, including noise and all.
The best way to accomplish this will be to run a wave recorder on the same sound card input that is being used for BBP. This way, I can play back and analyze, and I’ll get the exact same results as you’re getting.
///Leif
Hi Maniak!
Here’s how the volume control keys are normally supposed to work with Breakaway:
The keys indeed affect both Breakaway, and the Default Sound Device.
However, the Default Sound Device is Breakaway Pipeline, and it ignores volume changes! Thus, only Breakaway’s internal volume control should be affected — the system volume should not have an effect.
I see what you mean about hotkeys — it’s a good idea (my IBM Model-M keyboard doesn’t have volume control keys either), but the problem is that hotkeys will always interfere with other software. Every possible hotkey is used by some piece of software that someone uses, and grabbing them for Breakaway means we will break other software out there.
I’ve had problems like this before — when I press ALT-F5 in Total Commander, I expect to create a ZIP file, I don’t expect nVidia’s crap to pop up, for example. 🙂
I absolutely understand the problem about full screen games though. Do you have any ideas?
///Leif
