Leif

Hi Warren!

What you’re describing is ALMOST optimal. 🙂 It would work, and it would be great.

However, if you have two BBPs anyway, it might actually be slightly better to feed them both unprocessed audio.

The advantages you gain then is:

1. No peak control is ever lost, so no peaks ever have to be reclipped. Less distortion.
2. Clipping before running through a codec adds complexity to the signal. In the case of BBP, it’s not much, but it’s bound to steal at least a couple of bits. Running the audio through the codec unprocessed should sound better.
(Then again, I could be wrong here. Maybe running the processed audio through the codec sounds cleaner, since it’s closer to what the listener will actually hear, and enables the codec to do a better job.)

Using Protection Clip to compensate for the overshoots would definitely work too, though, and it would probably be plenty good enough.

Best,
///Leif

Hi Warren!

BBP’s L/R output audio is encoder ready. No further processing, clipping or filtering is necessary (or desirable).

However, the only lossy codec I know of that passes peak-controlled audio acceptably is MP2 (NOT MP3), and then only at very high bitrates (320 or 384).

MP3, WMA and all the others create way too much overshoot. You’d need a clipper at the other end. If you need to use one of those codecs, you should run BBP at the other end of the codec instead, at the transmitter site.

The speed control in BBP indeed affects AGC and Multiband together. There’s no way to separate them — my only suggestion is to choose the preset that is closest to where you want to me.

Best,
///Leif

YES.

///Leif

Hi Warren!

Breakaway Broadcast does not contain an MPX clipper. It does all its work in the L/R domain only, before stereo encoding is done. In this particular aspect, the layout of the processing is similar to an Optimod 8200, except that BBP’s stereo encoder is Digital while the 8200 had an Analog stereo encoder (after Digital Processing).

If the processed audio you’re feeding is not pre-emphasized, you could use the Protection Clip preset which already exists in BBP — I believe it will do exactly what you want.

If you are planning to feed pre-processed, pre-clipped audio from another processor, please don’t — I guarantee you that BBP’s clipper will do an audibly and measurably better job than anything currently out there. 🙂

If I (for example) had an 8200 in the studio, and wanted to run BBP as a clipper at the transmitter site, here’s how I’d set it up:

I would set the 8200 to 50us regardless of what country I was in, and I would turn Final Clip Drive all the way down, and I would also turn HF protection limiting down as far as I could (but I don’t remember off hand how flexible the 8200 is in allowing adjustment of these settings). Basically, I’d want the 8200 to do agc and compression but not clipping or HF limiting. Then, I’d use the Protection Clip preset in BBP, and adjust the Final Drive slider in BBP for the appropriate amount of clipping. That way, the final result will sound like an 8200, except it’ll magically be missing most of the distortion. 🙂

Delay and second input — it may possibly happen at some point. I’ve wished for it myself a couple of times actually. No promises though — the gotcha is that I’m trying to keep the BBP layout as simple as possible, being an entry-level FM processor. If I can figure out a sensible way to do it, I’ll consider it.

///Leif

Some have. It appears to run perfectly in W7 32-bit. In W7 64-bit, it runs great, but the toolbar doesn’t (yet) work.

///Leif

If it’s a new, fast AMD, it may just work fine.

Here is the caveat:

BBP makes heavy use of Intel’s IPP (Integrated Performance Primitives) library. This library contains heavily optimized building blocks like FFT algorithms, it’s easy to use, and very inexpensive to acquire.

However — it’s written by Intel, and "optimized for Intel processors". Basically, it runs artificially slowly on AMD processors, for marketing reasons. At least older AMD processors. I haven’t tested with never ones. So, if the installer test says doesn’t complain, if BBP runs fine, then you’re fine!

Best,
///Leif

Guillou, I cannot recommend AMD cpu’s for running Breakaway Broadcast. Sorry. Would you like a different (but incorrect) answer? 🙂

///Leif