Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Dj Buik, we definitely support using a single sound card for input and output.
It could be one of two things — sound card driver or cpu power.
Are you normally able to run BBP on this machine? What is the CPU?
If you are using KS (Kernel Streaming) please try using Wave instead to see if it works better.
Also try to run BBP using Pipeline 1 for Input and Pipeline 2 for Output, and play music into Pipeline 1. This way we can make sure that the CPU is fast enough.
Best regards,
///LeifOh, this explains it.
If the sound card is the default sound device, and you mute that device, obviously no audio will not be heard. This is in what you asked it to do, and no amount of programming will get around it 🙂.
It is recommended to keep Breakaway the default device.
///Leif
I think that has to be a video card / video driver related issue. Internally, Breakaway’s graphics run at normal priority, while the audio engine runs at higher priority (either time critical or realtime), so they shouldn’t be able to affect each other.
Try running the DPC latency checker and see if it can help you figure out which driver is causing the glitches.
Best regards,
///LeifWhoa! That doesn’t sound good at all.
The video driver should certainly not be able to make it crash.Have you tried deleting the Breakaway INI file to start fresh?
If you’re using Virtualization, the file may be hard to find — search your Users folder for "breakaway.ini" and you should find it somewhere in the VirtualStore. Just delete it — Breakaway will create a new one the next time you start.
///Leif
Hi LuK!
The $199 license is one instance on one computer.
For running two separate audio processors (two computers), you need two licenses.
For running multiple copies on a single computer (for example to process FM, Streaming separately), there are multi-instance licenses.
///Leif
Very very strange..
On my XP systems, opening the mixer and muting the pipeline has NO effect. Audio continues.
Which operating system are you guys running? Could it be a vista-related issue?
///Leif
Hey, I implemented the pre-emph noise, and the RF didn’t look anything like yours 🙂.
In fact, the only way to make it look remotely like yours was to feed pre-emph white noise into left only (right silent) really quietly, under 15% modulation.
As modulation increases, the sidebands caused by the pilot get completely obscured!
What am I missing? 🙂
///Leif
Howdy Sparky!
Alright, you’ve convinced me about the 30 Hz. It’s a worst case scenario test, and if your airchain passes that, it will pass anything. I’ll put it in.
However, the pre-emph white noise, I need some more explanation on. 🙂
It’s certainly easier to see whether the response is flat if the noise is white (because it will then show up as flat on the mpx speccy) and it’s also much easier to see asymmetry on the RF speccy (since it’s a nice smooth shape without visible sidebands). Or was it the visible sidebands you were after? Please explain how the fuchsia noise will be useful. Remember it will have much less energy than the white noise, since it still has to stay within +/- 75 kHz to avoid clipping the sound card output (unless you manually increase deviation after the sound card).
I’m convinced about having in-band signalling to switch presets — it’s an excellent idea. I wouldn’t use touch tones specifically — better to do something proprietary and more complicated, that way there’s less change of false triggers. I don’t have the hardware constraints the original DTMF designers had to deal with — I routinely do FFTs with thousands of points in the algorithm already, so I can easily detect a much more complicated (and thus more flexible) signal.
I will definitely implement the signalling it in the future. Just to make it clear, this (and other forms of dayparting) will be in more advanced versions, not in the $199 version. Value for money is already off the charts, so the bar is plenty high enough, I’m drawing the line right here. I’ve gotta make a living, you know 🙂.
Best regards,
///LeifFM Fuchsia, LOL! I like it 🙂.
However, considering that the purpose of the noise is to watch the MPX with a spectrum analyzer, either before or after RF encoding, I think true white noise may be even more useful. 🙂
How about this?
It’s not 100% white, because the noise is going through the highly advanced clippers, but it’s close enough. 🙂
I’ve also implemented the 30hz and 30hz burst, but I believe it would be a bad idea to keep it in. It turns out that an otherwise perfectly calibrated system that shows rock solid 100% with music and regular program material, can show several percent overshoot with the 30hz burst.. A lot of people seem to be confused / perplexed by the necessary calibration already, and I believe that adding this test mode would only make people compromise between optimizing for this non-real-world theoretical test case, and actual program performance. The only time it would work perfectly is with a completely DC straight path from BBP to the exciter, and while that is theoretically achievable, it’s unachievable in practice for the vast majority of BBP users.
These decisions aren’t easy, but sometimes compromises must be made in the name of real-world simplicity.
Another similar compromise I had to make was to clip bass symmetrically even when the user selects asymmetrical clipping — DC straight path is just not something we can count on when using regular sound cards as DACs.
White Noise is a go for the next version, though.
///Leif
Hey Sparky, that noise ain’t white 🙂
It’s been through pre-emphasis. It might make for a much more even-looking RF spectrum if it was white.
///Leif
In fact astonishingly few programs use Kernel Streaming — I only know of a handful, besides my own software: 3rd party Kernel Streaming plug-in for winamp, the ASIO4ALL driver, Foobar 2000 player.
You’re absolutely right about the volume control issue regarding programs just modifying the system volume control — this is a big contributing factor to why that volume control gets disabled when you install Breakaway — the pipeline is supposed to ignore it 🙂.
///Leif
Hi Patrik!
Breakaway Live will work well for webcasting the way a DSP plug-in would. It’s not a matter of me not wanting a DSP version, but I’m only one guy doing all the development, so I have to focus my efforts very intently, and there just hasn’t been time for a DSP version.
Best regards,
///LeifStuart, those are *very* different terms indeed 🙂.
What you’re seeing is an artifact of how I implemented the volume control key support. When you hold down the volume up / volume down keys, acceleration increases rapidly — but when you just click the buttons, the control moves in steps of 0.1dB.
So, what I should really do, is detect if the button is being clicked at a superhuman rate (as would be the case when you’re turning a volume knob that is emulating keystrokes) and make that increase acceleration. That way you’d be able to single-step in steps of 0.1dB and yet have rapid adjustment by adjusting the knob more quickly.
First, I’ve gotta find a keyboard with a volume knob though. I’ll start looking.
Interesting, Hydro! I’ll bet it’s because multiple sounds are getting mixed, and the sum of them end up above 0dB. The reason I have never run across this is that I never play games, i just play music. You did absolutely the right thing with the volume control then, good call 🙂.
Philip, which player is causing the problem again?
///Leif
Howdy!
The one major reason I can think of for not simply adding another control for "burst mode" for all test tones, is that I want to make it as simple as possible for the user. It’s much easier to explain in the documentation to "Select 30Hz Burst" than to have to set three controls correctly, especially since the other controls may then be left in the wrong state for other operations. Interesting application for BA Live too, I’ll definitely think about it 🙂.
There’s already tooltips that pop up when you place the cursor over the bar of interest. There have been all along. Geez, doesn’t anyone notice all the effort I spent on these little things 😀.
For white noise to modulate L+R and L-R equally, the noise in L and R must be completely uncorrelated. Easy enough to do, perhaps! It’ll be a useful feature indeed — BBP is a broadcast processor after all.
For the Save Preset as WAV, I was thinking somewhere along the lines of encoding data with multiple tones at the same time. With an FFT it’s easy enough to decode that, and it’s indeed easy to mute the output so that the tones are never heard. I was thinking of transferring the entire preset this way, but this may be over-ambitious — it would be much easier to just recall a saved slot! If Breakaway Broadcast Pro Ultra Plus Advanced (no, I don’t know what to call it yet) had 8 preset recall slots, and I include 8 ready-made MP3 files to recall these slots, I would save myself a lot of grief. For one, I couldn’t export MP3 without licensing an MP3 encoder, but if I just include pre-encoded files, we’re home free. Also, the detection could be very quick and basically fool-proof this way — the chance is basically nil that music would have exactly that combination of frequencies, especially if I make it a multi-stage sequence. This could be really really useful — even more so than dayparting/scheduling. Simply embed the sequence into the theme/intro of the show, and it’ll be all automatic.
Breakaway Broadcast indeed has plenty of look-ahead to mute the output. Breakaway Live doesn’t, but who cares — the tones don’t need to be muted in the studio. It’s not like they need to be full amplitude, -40dB down should be plenty strong enough.
Best regards,
///Leif
