Leif

Hi Benny!

Volume logic, just like Breakaway (or any processor), only allow you to use 1 (one) preset at a time.

Breakaway, on the other hand, allow you to modify the presets with three controls – Speed, Range, Power. Volume Logic had only 1, labeled Drive. Thus, in effect, Breakaway has an infinite number of presets.

Which one do you prefer? 🙂

///Leif

Thanks, man!

And, you’re welcome 🙂.

The thing is, what runs in hardware boxes (unless they’re analog), is in fact software. The type of CPU (whether it’s an Intel Celeron, Motorola 56k DSP, or Analog Devices SHARC) is irrelevant — it’s the algorithm that’s running on it that counts. And even if we’re talking about Analog processing, you simulate any circuit close enough (even a clipper) as long you oversample properly. As long as nothing of significant amplitude hits nyquist, Sampled audio is equal to analog 🙂.

I’m ecstatic I convinced you! Making the controls was a very tricky tradeoff – I wanted the controls to be much more powerful and useful than for example "Less-More" while making them easy enough so that someone could play with them and listen, without having to study a manual. (And for hints, there’s tooltips).

Thank you for your excellent post, and welcome to the board 😉.

///Leif

Hi Mike!

I’ve found that the higher end a system is, the more important it is to *not* have any high or low pass filtering. A big subwoofer won’t do any good if the audio has already been high-passed at 50hz, and pristine tweeters won’t do any good if the audio is low-passed at 15! I agree that when a system is otherwise nicely calibrated, a track that has excessive bass can be really over the top. That’s where a multiband compressor like Breakaway comes in really handy, to keep the spectral balance consistent. High-passing wouldn’t really help, unless it’s cutting out all bass from all tracks, which wouldn’t sound very good.

For webcasting, no need to worry. Bass uses virtually no bandwidth (so no need to filter it out), and all encoders already have built in low-pass filters (to remove excessive high frequencies) optimized for the exact bitrate you’re using!

High-pass filters are essential on mic processors (to prevent plosives causing problems down the line) but that’s more in the realm of audio production, and it’s impossible to apply a filter like this to a finished master without sacrificing everything else in the bass region.

Radio Magic – muddy and boomy? Heck yes! Just like FM stations in competitive markets.. I guess I succeeded 😉.

///Leif

Hehehe 🙂

The complicating factor with to-do lists is that they have to be prioritised.

Vista incompatibilities is likely affecting a lot more people than LeifCast would, and likely hindering sales. So, that one has to go on top.

That makes the priority list something like this:

1) DirectSound support for improved Vista Compatibility (stop-gap solution)
2) Winamp Output plug-in (because it won’t take that long, and will provide among other things file processing)
3) Breakaway for Webcasters: Winamp DSP plug-in / Standalone Executable / LeifCast
4) Proper Vista version (sAPO)

I also have a couple of other things I have to squeeze in somewhere, including but not limited to Eating, Sleeping, Living Life, Learning more Thai, etc.. Someone find me a planet with 48 hour days, please!

///Leif

Hi Mike!

First names work just fine 🙂.

Your terminology is technically correct, although uncommon 🙂. The low-level layer is usually referred to as "Kernel Mode", and the high-level layer as "User Mode".

Breakaway Pipeline is indeed a driver (runs in Kernel Mode), and appears to the system as hardware (a sound card). When you install Breakaway, this driver is set to be the default sound card – therefore, whenever user-mode applications play audio, its gets sent to this driver.

However, this driver, in reality, is not really a sound card – instead, what it does is to send the audio back to user-mode, where Breakaway is (hopefully) running to accept the audio, process it, and send it to the REAL sound card (the one hooked up to your speakers).

However, this driver is not really a cause of the problem you were describing before (Windows refuses to undock).

You were saying that the operating system would send a message to user-mode applications, in essence saying "i’m unplugging this device now – stop using it or i’ll make you".

However, that’s not usually how it works.

Consider the example of plugging in a USB flash drive, opening a console window (cmd.exe) and navigating to that drive (for example by typing G: and pressing enter).
Then, leave the console right where it is, and single-click the "safely remove hardware" icon in the tray, and try remove that device.

Instead of it succeeding, you get a message box : "The device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later".

Highly unhelpful!

If it would have at least said "cmd.exe is using it" then that would have been a clue, but it didn’t.

On the other hand, if you had an explorer window open, looking at the USB drive, then safely remove hardware would succeed, and close the explorer window, following the philosophy you described.

So, it’s *possible* for things to work this way, but to the best of my knowledge, they don’t, not when it comes to audio.

The problem is that Breakaway keeps the sound card open at all times, even when not playing audio.

So, the closest solution to your problem that I can think of, would be to make Breakaway only open the sound card when there is actual audio to play.

This will have the side effect of causing a slight glitch when you’re just starting to play, if the sound card was not already open. I’d have to have some kind of silence count, so that it would for example close the sound card after 5 seconds of silence.

If this mode of operations is acceptable to you, I’ll take a look – it may not be terribly hard to implement an option for Breakaway to work this way. However, I personally wouldn’t put up with this – the slight glitch would drive me nuts. Admittedly, i’m an extra special case when it comes to audio, so it might be worth it for you to avoid the annoyance when undocking your laptop.

Idea! As an alternative (and better) solution, though.. How about connecting your speakers to the headphone output of the laptop, instead of the docking station, and making Breakaway use the laptop’s internal sound instead of the docking stations?

I believe this would completely cure the problem, as there would be no audio device in use to disconnect.

///Leif

Help! I’m one person, drowning in work! 🙂

Seriously, I can’t plan that far ahead, there’s too many variables stacking up.

Maybe I should keep a public to-do list on this site 🙂

///Leif

Hi Knightrider!

Thank you very much! I figured someone like you would find it one day 😀.

Low shelving is actually there already, turning up Bass Level with Bass Shape set at 0 will basically give you a bass shelf. Setting Bass Shape lower will turn the bass boost into more of a peak, and change the corner frequency.

High shelving would be interesting – the only thing working against it keeping it easy to use and keeping the amount of sliders to a minimum (for normal users). I think someone like yourself might just need a version with much more controls 😉.

///Leif

Hi Brian!

Yes – as a stopgap measure. A true vista version (using an sAPO) is technically a better solution, but it’s completely new territory for me, and thus will take too long. Better to make the current version more vista compatible – that way it will work properly for vista users, while I go back into the lab and take the time it needs to do it the "right way"(tm).

DirectSound is emulated in Vista, as is WaveIn/Out.

Breakaway’s currently biggest problem (the huge latency in Vista) comes from the fact that Microsoft made the WaveIn/WaveOut emulation intentionally awful in vista, to "encourage" people to use a more modern interface. That does make sense – WaveIn/WaveOut is very very old (1991 or so), whereas DirectSound is a little bit newer, released around 1996 if I remember correctly, and more suited for realtime audio.

I’ve never actually learned to use DirectSound before. I’ve used WaveIn/WaveOut (because it has worked perfectly up to and including XP), and when I needed lower latency, I started using Kernel Streaming (which is even faster and more stable than DirectSound). Breakaway uses Kernel Streaming if it’s available — the problem is that it isn’t available at all on most Vista systems, leaving Breakaway to resort to the only other interface it currently knows — WaveIn/WaveOut.

Writing a DirectSound object and making Breakaway use it will be much easier and faster than doing an sAPO as that requires redoing the whole structure from scratch. So, it seems to be the optimal order to do things, to bring the most happiness (in the form of good audio) to the greatest number of people possible, in the least amount of time 😉.

We’re also working on getting the pipeline driver signed, so that Breakaway will be able to run in Vista64 too. Stay tuned 🙂.

///Leif