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Whoops 🙂
Yes, please do.
Actually, there’s a free software oscilloscope on the market. It’s called Breakaway Audio Enhancer!
After the 30-day trial is over, if you leave it in bypass, it won’t bother you (other than the very first toast popup when you start it). This way, you get a nice free DPO oscilloscope, perfect for looking at your stream.
///Leif
Hi guys!
I do have some news on this. We’re changing mac developers. Something may actually happen now 🙂.
Best,
///LeifPboehi, the 8 versions are for using multiple instances. Imagine if you’re running 2 instances of Breakaway Live, and Two instances of Sam Broadcaster, and you want to process each separately. You’d need to use Livelink 1 and Livelink 2.
///Leif
Howdy!
Indeed, without MPX it’s real hard to do anything useful.
The first time I heard an 8500, I was very impressed with the bass. Huge, fat, round bass indeed!
However, after a while I started noticing how the bass would disappear whenever there was midrange, and how bass kicks would make the bottom fall out of the voice as well.
So, I started trying to tweak the preset to get rid of these artifacts. It was very strange though — I didn’t see anything on the meters that would indicate bass or wideband pumping!
After trying just about everything else, I found the bass clipping switch (hard/medium/soft).. It was set to Medium. I switched it to Hard, and all the pumping and other actifacts went away, but so did the big fat bass sound! All of a sudden it sounded a lot like an 8200.
So, that bass comes at a price. You may not hear it at first, but once you do, it gets real annoying — and I believe it may fatigue people subconsciously, even if they’re not consciously aware of it.
To me, it sounds like it’s some kind of compressor, covering midrange and downwards.. It pumps up the bass when there’s room for it, and squashes it down when there’s not.
Breakaway actually has something not too dissimilar, but in a more refined, less obvious manner. You can see it quite clearly if you select the Plutonium preset, and set the oscilloscopes to De-emph Left or Right, and then play "Push" by Madonna, from the "Confessions on a dance floor" album. In the very beginning you’ll see the bass almost going full scale, and then when the high frequency bells come in, you’ll see the bass waveform being clipped deeper, to make room for the treble.
The difference in these to approaches is that the 8500 appears to use extra compression for the bass (causing pumping), and Breakaway does it all by clipping, which avoids pumping but indeed gives the bass a "fartier" sound when there’s just no room to do anything else. The fartiness is very well filtered in Breakaway though — the tops are flat but the edges aren’t sharp. The advantage is that pumping is completely avoided.
I do know what you mean about the 8500s bass sound. It has a very attractive quality at first. However, once I started hearing the artifacts it causes, I just couldn’t get past it anymore — it didn’t sound acceptable to my ears, and for that resaon, I did it differently in Breakaway, even if it can’t make the bass quite as (sometimes) big as the 8500. If I was forced to use an 8500 for a station, I would have had to set it to Hard bass clipping, to avoid this problem.
It just confirms the rule that there’s no such thing as a free lunch in Broadcast Processing. Man, I wish there was though! Would make my life so much easier… 😉
Best,
///LeifHi guys!
Someone posted a short clip from my presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98U70J9E … annel_page
Please excuse me losing the train of thought every couple of sentences.. Tends to happen, especially during presentations 😉.
quote :I would love to get info about the “trade-off” between regular BBP vs. low-latency BBP. (I’m guessing it’s in the clipper!)Biggest difference: Breakaway Core runs in Low Latency mode (like in Breakaway Audio Enhancer), not Phase Linear mode (like in normal BBP). Low and high pass filters are also not phase linear.
The clipper back-end is also different — it’s closer to the "cpu optimized" mode of standard BBP, but further slimmed down with latency in mind. Distortion control is done at half filter length (meaning half the block size) compared to standard BBP.
I must say that after developing the low latency version I was astounded how close the sound quality is to the full version! It’s really very close. The low latency version is still telephone, saxophone, xylophone-safe! There is a slight audible reduction in transient sharpness compared to standard BBP. Because the clipping has to be done in very few stages to maintain low latency, each chain has to do more, and more quickly, and as such it can’t pack things as tightly right at the edge of the waveform, and that’s where standard BBP puts those tight, sharp transients.
The low latency version has an on-air throughput latency of about 18ms.
There’s actually also an ultra-low-latency mode which halves the filter length again, and cuts on-air latency down to about 14ms. However, it trades off more distortion control, and at these settings it’s no longer xylophone-safe, and no longer "Evanescence – My Immortal" -safe, even though it still does better than most hardware processors. I wouldn’t use the ultra low latency setting myself, quality is too important to me — but I’ll leave it in, for people to make their own decision. You could also turn down the final drive a bit, trade off some loudness and clean up the sound.
I will upload MPX clips of the different clippers at some point, so you can compare them 😉.
Breakaway Broadcast Processor Plus (or whatever we’ll call it? BBPP? BBP Asio? Help, someone.) will also have a low latency studio output (pre-clipper) with less than 10ms delay (probably 8 or so). You’ll be able to choose on-air latency mode Low, Ultra-Low, or High (that is, maximum quality), while still having the low latency studio output.
It’ll be $299, and it will be a FREE upgrade for customers who own both BBP and Live. We’ll work out a $100 upgrade program for existing BBP-only customers too.
///Leif
Indeed, not compatible.
Also, watch out! Some ASUS motherboards which have the Realtek 883 chip, actually have a relabeled 662 chip!!
An easy way to tell: If there’s just 3 audio connectors, it’s definitely not an 88x chip.
If there’s 6 audio connectors, it probably is, and most 88x chips support 192k. Check the specs on Realtek’s site: http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/prod … l=4&Conn=3Best,
///LeifHi Celar!
At the meetdag I showed the new composite clipper, and:
(drumroll)
The new Low Latency Breakaway Broadcast!
Microphone -> Airwaves in 18 milliseconds, with audio quality *very* close to regular BBP. Also has a built in studio output with about 8ms delay.
I’ll release it within a couple of months, it will cost $299, and it will be free for customers who have previously bought both Breakaway Live and Breakaway Broadcast! We’ll definitely have an upgrade program for people who are interested too.
This version will run ONLY with ASIO sound cards, but it will have a kernel streaming input for RDS/Sync in to function with the Airomate RDS encoder.
More later 🙂.
Best,
///LeifHi guys!
They mentioned yesterday that there will be live video streaming, and that there will also be video recordings available on the web later. I believe the live stream will be available here: http://www.niehoff.nl/radio/
We will also record all the A/B comparisons as MPX, with MpxTool! We’ll record BOTH in parallel (even though the audience present at the actual meetdag will hear only 1 at a time) so you will be able to play and analyze yourself very accurately in MpxTool.
I visited a pirate station yesterday.. Holy crap, the Dutch take their pirate radio VERY seriously! 5 KW transmitter (30 KW ERP), 70 meter motorized antenna on a truck, the studio in a caravan (mobile home) ready for partying.. It seems to be a HUGE regional hobby here in Twente, Nederland. I confess, I had NO idea!
I will be showing a BIG surprise (or two) at the meetdag.
For anyone who’s coming, see you in Fleringen! For those who can’t, I’m sorry you missed it — it looks like today will be a VERY interesting day on many fronts!
Well.. 7:16 am.. Time for me to start packing!
Best,
///LeifHi Aubadge!
It’s definitely a false positive. Nowadays, antivirus programs have to detect so many different virus signatures that it’s possible that any program randomly matches. In fact, this has happened before with a previous version of Breakaway.
However, it’s very unlikely that TWO different Breakaway versions are giving false positives at the same time!
What antivirus scanner are you using?
Best,
///LeifAbdul, I’m sorry, but we’re not currently planning a VST plug-in. It doesn’t make sense for a broadcast processor to be a plug-in — it works better to have Audio I/O built in.
///Leif
Hi Gusty!
Breakaway Broadcast is designed to be simple, easy to use, yet powerful — thus we have to focus on having only the very most important features, to avoid complicating the user interface.
However, we are planning to support LCDs, rackmounting, touchscreens and dayparting (and other advanced features) in future more advanced products, targeted at processing experts! Stay tuned. 🙂
Best,
///Leif
